Volume 2

The collected papers of Sir W. Bowman, Bart., F.R.S / edited for the committee of the "Bowman Testimonial Fund" by J. Burdon-Sanderson and J. W. Hulke.

  • Bowman, William, Sir, 1816-1892.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The collected papers of Sir W. Bowman, Bart., F.R.S / edited for the committee of the "Bowman Testimonial Fund" by J. Burdon-Sanderson and J. W. Hulke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    the time of Harvey had hardly been seen united in any one man, is to be explained bv the mode in which his mind ever carried physiological principles into the details of daily practice, and sought in return, by the study of those details, to illustrate and advance his general views of the processes of life. Had the two fields of thought been in his estimation distinct and separate, he could not have achieved in each so great a victor}^ In each, it will be found on examination, his success depended largely on the real union which he, more than any of his contemporaries, or even of his predecessors, recognised to exist between them. English surgery and English medicine, in all their departments, have been since strongly coloured by this principle. This, indeed, is the abiding lesson which his life and labours have imparted to those who succeed him in the noble function of ministering to the wounded and sick, in his own country and throughout the world. The Hunters may both be regarded as types of what the great masters and leaders of the Healing Art should be. They were anatomists ; they were physiologists ; they were pathologists; not by second-hand learning from the tongues or pens of other men, though this they did not despise, but by . truth-loving observation and interrogation of Nature herself, in all her haunts of health and of disease ; admitting no veils of limitation to be drawn by fashion, or caprice, or selfish interest between provinces and things essentially akin, but taking in the whole scope of the Art as one great and ample field of noble study and beneficent activity—one by the unity of man's body, to which it yields a voluntary and loving service ; one by the identity of the methods of research by which the secrets of that body (whatever secrets, and of whatever part) are to be disclosed • one by the common aim and intention of all treatment, internal or external, remedial or preventive ; one, lastly, by the simplicity of the moral attitude which should stamp us all as members of one body in our relations towards one another, to individual patients, and to the community among which we labour. Gentlemen, I look upon the present meeting, comprising native members of every branch of our profession (and would that we could welcome, in future years, many more brother members from other lands !), as one representing the idea most needing to be insisted on amongst doctors at this time and in our own country, and which, I am persuaded, men like Harvey and the Hunters would have been foremost to assert and act upon—the idea of the oneness of our common calling. And can we aver that there is no need to advance this idea ? For, could we imagine these great ones of the past to be still with us, what special encouragement or opportunities for his cherished pursuits, we may ask, would Harvey now find in his own favoured College of Physicians, whose welfare and improvement, we are told, was the chief object that occupied his mind for several years before his death, but where solemn lectures on surgery are no longer given ; where there is no anatomical or chirurgical work performed ; and where no repository for simples and rarities exists, such as he fondly hoped by his benefactions and his example to have founded; even no museum