Some debatable questions and how to solve them : an address delivered at the opening of the session, 1883-4, before the Birmingham and Edgbaston Debating Society / by Sampson Gamgee.

  • Gamgee, Sampson, 1828-1886.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some debatable questions and how to solve them : an address delivered at the opening of the session, 1883-4, before the Birmingham and Edgbaston Debating Society / by Sampson Gamgee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    so difficult that the question cannot be removed from the region of debate to that of certainty. Take this occurrence in a bank. A customer has an overdrawn account, and is in the habit of paying in cash and bills of exchange. One of his cheques is returned, and he seeks redress for injury to his commercial credit, alleging that the returned cheque was within his allowed limit. The matter is one of account, and at first sight would be deemed easy of settlement by an unprejudiced and skilled third party. But the result is very different. The contention is argued before the courts by able counsel. The decision in first instance is overruled on appeal, then upset again, and so on to the Lords; with the result that the sum total of the judges' dicta may numerically be very nearly balanced. Questions of patent- right, which are cl'iefly of fact, are rich in similar instances of ■dissidence ; and the more you investigate, the stronger evidence do you obtain that every question is debatable, requiring to be •approached with caution, and discussed with comprehensiveness and impartiality. Of no questions is that more true than of historical ones. Take for instance that of the discovery of the circulation of the blood, ever rich in interest, and just now vividly recalled by the ■ re-interment of Harvey's remains. Did he make the discovery ? So great a man as William Hunter, writing in the last century, re- plied in the negative; so do this day the members of the Academy of Rome, who attribute the discovery to Csesalpinus. 'i'hat Harvey discovered all the truths involved in a knowledge of the circulation of the blood, cannot be maintained for a moment. That was the work of many men in different ages; and, when this question is debated, the relative merits of successive workers claim recognition. Galen contributed facts of the first importance. The famous pas- sage in the Chriszianismi Restitutio of Michael Servetus, bears the impress of inspired genius, and scarcely less wonderful is that from Carlo Ruini. Harvey's predecessor, Realdus Columbus, knew and demonstrated the lesser or pulmonary circulation—namely, the transit of blood from the heart to the lungs and back to the heart.