Medicine and surgery one inductive science, being an attempt to improve its study and practice, on a plan in closer alliance with inductive philosophy, and offering, as first fruits, the law of inflammation ... the whole being the introduction and first part of a system of surgery / By George Macilwain.

  • Macilwain, George, 1797-1882.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medicine and surgery one inductive science, being an attempt to improve its study and practice, on a plan in closer alliance with inductive philosophy, and offering, as first fruits, the law of inflammation ... the whole being the introduction and first part of a system of surgery / By George Macilwain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    can the replacement of broken or dislocated parts be fairly called an art; since a great deal will often depend on a knowledge of the laws of muscular action, and of the means by which the impedi- ments afforded thereby are best overcome or evaded. In thus contending that surgery should be regarded as a science, it is necessary to observe that I speak more with reference to what it must necessarily be as a branch of natural knowledge, than to any actual possession which we have of such knowledge. But if we regard it as one department of medical science, humble though its pretensions may be, they appear to me to be superior to what is called medical science, in popular contradistinc- tion to it. The difference between an art and a science seems to be essentially this:—an art consists in the knowledge of certain means by which we can produce certain effects; but without our understanding the principles on which they depend, or, in other words the laws of Nature, of which they are the necessary exemplifications. A science consists in the know- ledge of a certain number of phenomena, and the power of referring such phenomena to the laws by which they are go- verned. Galileo’s pump exemplifies the art, our own pumps the science ; though the mechanical construction be the same. In this sense, medical science,—I here include in that term both medicine and surgery,—are at so low a point, that their claim to be considered sciences at all, in relation to our actual knowledge, becomes almost questionable; but surgery seems to me to approach the character of a science much more nearly than other branches of medicine ; and this, not because it is easier, as has been somewhat infelici- _ tously asserted by a modern writer, but because it has, so far at least as Mr. Hunter is concerned, been cultivated in a more philo- sophical manner; that is, by observing what Nature does in repairing injuries, &c. and by founding our proceedings, if not on her laws, at least on their proximate proceedings. Herein lies the beauty of most that Mr. Hunter did, which has proved really useful ; and which has led to a certainty and uniformity in many surgical matters which we do not find in the practice of medicine. For example, if I wish to heal a wound now, I evidently found my proceedings on what I know to be Nature’s processes, and my measures are confined to the removal of what must ne- cessarily retard or prevent her operations ; but if these expedients refer to any thing but local circumstances, if I am, in short, obliged to refer them to the general condition of the animal, I find