A medical tour in Europe / [Fielding H. Garrison].

  • Garrison, Fielding H. (Fielding Hudson), 1870-1935.
Date:
[1930]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A medical tour in Europe / [Fielding H. Garrison]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/38 (page 247)
    of medical history (as a phase of the history of ideas) can be taught in any museum, even the very best conceivable. One may even doubt Keith’s dictum that “museum-mak¬ ing and history-writing are the same thing,” for even Sud- li off's great catalogue of the Dresden Hygienic Exhibit of 1911 makes no such pretensions. What the museum man does, in effect, is to display the crude symbolism or ma¬ terialism behind primitive modes of thought, to stake out lines of approach and attack upon difficult problems and to visualize isolated bits of achievement. In primitive medicine and the history of hygiene, some of these exhibits may be more eloquent and informing than the printed page; but it is plainly impossible to elucidate the medicine of classical antiquity, of the Middle Ages, of the Renais¬ sance and successive periods by any such method. As in the collections in the Josephinum (Vienna), there is a dis¬ tinct disadvantage in exhibiting too many objects at one and the same time. The smaller and more select the col¬ lection, the better will it illustrate medicine in relation to the history of ideas. In this regard, the historical exhibits made bv the late Admiral Flint in the National Museum or by Majors Callender and Ash in the Army Medical Museum at Washington, albeit insignificant in size, have considerable teaching value. When the Wellcome Museum is fully developed, in a milieu of sufficient magnitude it will undoubtedly be the most astounding collection of medico-historical treasures in existence. What is set down here, is stated frankly as honest opinion, without reference to the esteem one has for the founder of the London col¬ lections. There is no finer, more modest gentleman living than Henry S. Wellcome and none more deserving of any honor that might be accorded him by the British or the American nation. To him, the British Empire, in par¬ ticular, owes much, and one was painfully surprised that he should be subjected to any criticism whatever. We are privileged to quote his own statement (from a private letter) :