The advance of medical science since Huxley's day : the Huxley lecture, delivered at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School / by Edward Mellanby.

  • Mellanby, Edward, Sir, 1884-1955.
Date:
[1935?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The advance of medical science since Huxley's day : the Huxley lecture, delivered at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School / by Edward Mellanby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/16
    THE HUXLEY LECTURE. Delivered at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School by Edward Mellanby, M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.S. (Secretary, Medical Research Council). THE ADVANCE OF MEDICAL SCIENCE SINCE HUXLEY’S DAY. Huxley died in 1895. It is difficult nowadays for young people to realise how powerful was his influence in 1902, when I became an undergraduate at Cambridge, and probably it was even then beginning to decline. As far as I was concerned this influence was profound, as is illustrated by the fact that the first prize I obtained at Cambridge was invested in the purchase of all his essays. In those days it was customary for undergraduates to discourse on topics that interested them before various societies—a practice which I regret to hear has now almost ceased, undergraduates preferring to listen to dons rather than run their own societies. I have recently read again, after thirty years, some of my own undergraduate efforts. I am impressed and rather surprised to see how greatly influenced I must have been by Huxley’s writings. In one case I find I even stole a title from him, and called a paper “ Science and Culture,” although I must add I am relieved to see that I did not crib any substantial part of his famous article on this subject. Another paper, entitled Sin,” centred round two discourses that influenced me at that time : one was Huxley’s “ Evolution and Ethics,” and the other a lecture given by a Professor of Theology on the “ Fall of Man.” Opinion on theological problems in those days, especially when unorthodox, was a much more serious matter than it is nowadays, and my views on Sin gained a certain notoriety of no advantage to myself. I mention these facts in order to show you in the first place that Huxley was, and is one of my heroes, and, secondly, to explain why I am so proud to find myself asked to recall his illustrious memory as a Huxley Lecturer of this Hospital. If I can do nothing else in this lecture than persuade some of my audience to devote a little of their time to reading Huxley’s essays, I shall feel satisfied. It is true that many of his teachings have now passed into common currency, and that most of his views on subjects at that time intensely controversial are accepted as a matter of course to-day, but nevertheless his essays are not only full of sense and knowledge, but most of them read as freshly now as when they were written, and form an example of the finest English literature ever written by a man of science. If there is anyone alive who still doubts whether a scientific training and outlook