Locke and Sydenham : with other occasional papers / by John Brown.

  • Brown, John, 1810-1882
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Locke and Sydenham : with other occasional papers / by John Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    where I cannot help thinking that we have, as a profef- fion, gone aftray in our indifcriminate abufe of all thefe new practices and noftrums: they indicate, however coarfely and ftupidly, fome want in us. There is in them all fomething good, and if we could draw to us, inftead of driving away from us, thofe men whom we call, and in the main truly call, quacks,—if we could abforb them with a difference, rejefting the ridiculous and mifchievous much, and adopting and fancSlioning the valuable little, we and the public would be all the better off. Why fhould not “ the Faculty” have under their control and advice, and at their command, rub- bers, and fhampooers, and water men, and milk men, and grape men, and cudgelling men, as they have cuppers, and the like, inftead of giving them the advantage of crying out “ perfecution,” and quoting the martyrs of fcience from Galileo downwards. IV. As my readers may find to their difcontent, the natural, and, till we get into “ an ampler aether and diviner air,” the neceflary difference between fpeculative fcience and praftical art is iterated and re- iterated with much perfiftency, and the neceffity of eftimating medicine more as the Art of healing than the Science of difeafed a£Iion and appearance,^ and its being 1 When the modern fcientific methods firft burfl on our medical world, and efpecially, when morbid anatomy in con- nexion with phyfical figns (as diftinguilhcd from purely vital fymptoms, an incomplete, but convenient diftinc- tion), the ftethofcope, microfcope, &c., it, as a matter of course, became the rage to announce with ftartling minute- nefs what was the organic condition of the interior—as if a watchmaker would fpend molt of his own time and his work- men’s, in debating on the beautiful ruins of his wheels, inllcad