Outlines of medical proof ; with remarks on its application to certain forms of irregular medicine / by Thomas Mayo.
- Mayo, Thomas, 1790-1871.
- Date:
- 1850
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Outlines of medical proof ; with remarks on its application to certain forms of irregular medicine / by Thomas Mayo. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![elusions, which if all the steps of the inquiry have been eorrectlv made, be true. And it is to be observed, that these conclusions we can obtain only in the sciences, in which we participate with the physical philosopher, and which afford definite and fixed subject matter: whereas the clinical conclusions of pathology and therapeutics are subject to observation alone, and from the fluctuating nature of the phenomena must lay claim only to different amounts of probability. Indeed, however desirable the kind of certainly produced by an experimental proof, it must be admitted that the method of observation is tlie main source of those principles which govern the practice of medicine, not only as obtained from the phenomena of disease, and the action of remedies, but as elicited from the auxiliary sciences above noticed. The very circumstances that these principles must be modi- fied in their application by a reference to the mysterious laws of vitality, may account for this. It is difficult to obtain such a command over the living organism as to iiiter- rogate nature through the rejections and exclusions of experiments. Still we know that this has been occasionally done with success. The belief of Prochaska respecting certain functions of the nervous system, now called the reflex functions, was belief in a probability made out by observa- tion. But the ex])eriments originated by Sir Charles Bell tended to superinduce that certainty which belongs to their peculiar kind of evidence, on the above conjecture, by demonstrating the existence of the double roots of certain nerves, efferent and afferent. The “mera palpatio^’ of unmeaning and casual experiment, of course does not allow us to assume the credit of this kind of proof. The proof that the second sound of the heari arises from an action of the aortic valves, is obtained by Dr. Williams through experiment: the separation and exclusion of every other part that can conceivably produce it without removal of the second sound, and the cessation of this sound on the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28522667_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
