Organopathy, or, Medical progress : an essay / by William Sharp, M.D.

  • Sharp, William, 1805-1896.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Organopathy, or, Medical progress : an essay / by William Sharp, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    13/72 (page 7)
    ledged teachers, instead of observation, analysis, and induction. An old friend of mine wrote in the margin of his GuLLEN, more than fifty years ago, opposite the words relax the spasm,— It is sad indeed that a head so clear as the author's should thus be haunted by spasm ! Truly Hippocrates said well the art is difficult I These are the mistakes of faithful men, of men who have the strongest claims upon our respect and admiration. They are men who have mourned over the imperfections of their calling, and who have spent a long life in earnest efforts to remove them; men of genius, learning, and in- dustry ; men who, when other people went to bed, lighted a fresh candle. Moreover, they are men who have ever made a ready response to the calls of duty, whether those calls have come from patients needing succour, or from medical men seeking information. Experience—empiricism. As there was among the ancients, so there is among moderns another class of worthy men in the faculty, men of strong minds, good sense, and simplicity of purpose, who distrust authority, and who are convinced of the failure of reason when em- ployed in speculation. These men take up another posi- tion, and, rejecting hypotheses of all kinds, rely upon experience. Dr. Stokes recently gave expression to this view in the Medical Council of the Empire, on seconding Professor Acland's motion.* There can, he said, be no doubt that medicine re- quires to be placed on a much more scientific basis than it at present possesses. It is now simply empiricism ; and that empiricism is only tolerable and useful because it is wielded by thoughtful men. In the opinion of this section of physicians no true theory of diseases and their treatment is yet known. They look upon the explanatory contrivances of the dogmatists as belonging to the evils which flew out of Pandora's box. * This motion is noticed in a Paper on The Physiological action of Medicines, read at JN ottingham, Sept., 1866.