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 : addressed particularly to the medical student and the profession, but easy and intelligible to the public also, 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 : addressed particularly to the medical student and the profession, but easy and intelligible to the public also, the whole being the introduction and first part of a system of surgery / by George Macilwain. 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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    As regards any benefit derivable from the diffusion of know- ledge, medicine has laboured under peculiar disadvantages. We observe a great difference in the extent and nature of the ignorance of the public on medical and other matters. In general, ignorance consists in the simple absence of knov^rledge. In medicine, it is accompan'ed by all sorts of error. Instead of being left in a condition in which men, under the influence of inclination or necessity, seldom fail to discover some- thing of the truth in nature, the public have been taught every variety of falsehood and absurdity. Their passions, prejudices, and prevailing weaknesses, have aU been excited in aid of every variety of quackery; whilst the absence of information has left them with- out the smallest protection from imposition. To such an extent has this been carried, that the most successful quack almost ever known used to say that the secret of his success lay in the simple proposition— Tell the public something in regard to medicine which common sense shews to be impossible. For the moment, we are astonished at the effrontery of such a confession; and yet, if we look around us at the present hour, London alone furnishes too many exemplifications of the application of this precept: but we must not look for it alone in avowed empirics; there is too much of regular as well as of irregular quackery. Teach the public but truth, they will become quick and intelligent detectors of all species of imposition : nor is this all; by knowing how and what they are to observe, they will also become very useful assistants in scientific investigations, as I have already often experienced. It has been usual to attribute the low state of medical science to the difficulties attending its cultivation. I can in no way sub- scribe to this opinion. Like other sciences, it has its difliculties, both general and peculiar, doubtless ; but it has also great advan- tages. The difficulties of which we complain, as resulting from that interminable variet}- of form under which disease obliges us to investigate the laws of nature, shew how little we have wrought in the right way. Properly regarded, these varieties are of the highest utility : they are the strongest and most necessary tests of any law concerning which it may be our object to acquire; and furnish ready to our hands, in countless forms of disease, varui- tious of conditions, which, in other sciences, we are obliged artifi- cially to institute. Besides which, it is only through the multiform aradations in disease, that we learn the true relations of this nu-