Two uncommon esophageal cases / Anthony Bassler.

  • Bassler, Anthony, 1874-
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Two uncommon esophageal cases / Anthony Bassler. 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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    Thus in the body corporate of medical men, as in the body of each individual being, there is this constant war between opposing motives. EVOLUTION OF MEDICAL IDEALS Perhaps I have not been sufficiently following the biologic literature of the last few years, and what I am about to say is already a commonplace; but after a study of mendelian heredity I have wondered why no one has come prominently forward to demonstrate the why and wherefore of progressive evolution and its inevitability in the terms of dominant and recessive. So far as I can see, in every mating it is the positive acquirement or quality that is dominant; the defect or absence of the same that is recessive. Thus hairiness is apt to be domi- nant to smoothness or want of hairs; the presence of eye pigment to absence of pigment; with the result that if there be mating between the possessor of a dominant quality and a possessor of a recessive quality the off- spring of the first generation all present the dominant quality. There it is, although not absolutely fixed; the recessive character is also present but latent; and if two of this generation mate the chances are that the reces- sive quality will show itself, but only in the proportion of one to four. Three out of four will present the domi- nant, the added quality; in one of the three firmly fixed, in the other two with the recessive quality also present but latent. In this way, you see, the dominant quality, acting on the majority of individuals of- the strain, gradually becomes predominant, and there is the greater likelihood that if some further positive feature be acquired this will fall to the lot of some member of the major class; and so as the ages progress the inevitable tendency is to a steady increment of properties—to, in short, progressive cumulative evolution. So it is with all true progress: it is cumulative; it has to be. Two centuries ago, beyond certain crude ideas regarding disinfection, preventive medicine was almost non-existent. The function of the physician was only to cure. Then this added idea of prevention showed itself in some of the greater men of the profes- sion and steadily with successive generations, being a positive acquirement, it is becoming more and more a fixed principle of the profession. Whither is it leading us ? To this, it seems to me: The time is on us when the physician must make his