An introductory lecture to a course of lectures on clinical medicine, delivered in the theatre of the London Hospital, Saturday, January 31, 1829 / [James Alexander Gordon].

  • Gordon, James A. (James Alexander), 1793-1872.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introductory lecture to a course of lectures on clinical medicine, delivered in the theatre of the London Hospital, Saturday, January 31, 1829 / [James Alexander Gordon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The result of such conflicts between the advocates of hypo¬ theses and experience was, that as the imperfections of the former became evident and rendered them untenable, the latter was debased ; and experience, which in the school of Hippocrates had been rational empiricism, became, in the hands of Herophilus and his disciple, Philinus Coius, blind empiricism. Boldly declaring that they placed more faith in medicines than in the medical art, they were pro¬ perly the founders of the Empirical School. The corpuscular theory of Epicurus again introduced hypothesis into medicine, and from this sprung the sect of the Methodics, who, feeling the insufficiency of their doc¬ trines, returned to experience; and Agathmus Spartanus had the rare merit, by combining the dogmas of the Me¬ thodics with experience, to found the “ Eclectic School.” To this, in his youth, belonged the celebrated Galen, but he afterwards departed from it ; and, by uniting the subtil- ties of the Academy with the doctrines of the Peripatetics, he formed a theory of his own, which, adopted by the Arabians, interpolated by the chemists, and modified by various other sects, ruled the republic of medicine with an iron sway, until the influence of Lord Bacon’s Philosophy, and the labours of Forestus, Schenk, and Sydenham, finally delivered our art from its trammels. Were it possible in this brief sketch to enumerate all who have acknowledged the superiority of experience to theory, I should not fail to pay a tribute to Baglivi, Hux- ham, Zimmerman, and De Haen : it is sufficient, however, for my present purpose to have demonstrated, that even before Lord Bacon’s time, every improvement in medicine arose from experience, not hypothesis* ; and that whenever physicians abandoned their only safe guide, they were obliged, by painful and signal failures, to abandon hypo¬ thesis and return to observation. To the influence of what is termed Lord Bacon’s Philo- sophy, medicine, in common with all other sciences, is in¬ debted for the overthrow of the Scholastic system, and for the establishment in its stead of the method of induction * F. Bayle de Experientia et Ratione conjungenda. 1678.—J. A. Hofs- tetter de Experientia et Ratione tanquam fulcris et principiis cognoscendi in arte medica. Halle, 1705.—D. H. Lavater, Dissert, de nexu Theorise e praxi. Gottingen, 1801.