The progress of pathological science : John Baptist Morgagni and his successors : an inaugural address, delivered as President to the Pathological and Clinical Society of Glasgow / [by Prof. Gairdner].

  • Gairdner, W. T. (William Tennant), Sir, 1824-1907.
Date:
[1887?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The progress of pathological science : John Baptist Morgagni and his successors : an inaugural address, delivered as President to the Pathological and Clinical Society of Glasgow / [by Prof. Gairdner]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    wrecks, as it were, of our physical being when hope- lessly damaged and beyond repair. In these, it has found an abounding and a most fruitful occupation ; it has carried out its motto to the full; the dead relics speak, in its Transactions, with voices sometimes of warning, sometimes of encouragement, always, or nearly always, of most wholesome and invaluable instruction to the living. It is not because we despise these voices that we have avoided thus limiting our programme, but because, in a smaller field and with fewer resources, we have been naturally guided, as it were, into a different course; and we have, therefore, adopted the name “ Clinical,” as showing distinctly that all the facts and phenomena of disease, in so far as they admit of de- monstration, are within the sphere of our operations. And there is in this view of the matter, if I mistake not, one literally immense advantage. It is not for the benefit of science that the living and the dead aspects of disease should be studied apart; nor are they so studied, in fact, either in the London “Pathological” or in its younger neighbour, and necessary supplement, the “ Clinical ” Society. We hold the processes of disease to be one and the same in kind, whether they issue in the spoiling of a function, or of an organ, or, as most commonly happens, of both together. And we hold, therefore, that the method of observation is the best which conjoins these two fields of observation, and adds to the study of organic ruins that of deranged vital phenomena.