Sequel to Outlines of medical proof / by Thomas Mayo.

Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sequel to Outlines of medical proof / by Thomas Mayo. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    But with these works our task is limited in extent, though it remains of undiminished importance, kor I have a right to expect that the works alluded to shall have been read in the course of the preliminary mental dynamics, so ably sketched by Mr. Green. And this consideration brings before me a remark, to which I should not otherwise have adverted, made by the writer of an article in the British and Foreign Medical Quarterly, in the heading of which my Outlines of Medical Proof appeared, as one of the works reviewed. On this work he observes, and it is almost his only remark respecting the “ Outlines,” that they are “ deficient in a due appreciation of the most important part of the genuine process of induction, namely, its connecting idea.” Now this involves a question, whether it is for the advantage of science, that its stores should in every work be so unfolded, that the work may be reviewed out of itself? Whether it may not be rather desirable, with a view to the progression of knowledge, that the author should accept and hand on the torch, without always walking back with his reader or reviewer, and shewing him all the passages, which he ought to have explored for himself before he joined company with the author ? I presume my reader to possess such an antecedent knowledge of induction, as would comprise a due appreciation of the general im- portance of its connecting idea, and enable me to deal with induction only in regard to its specialties as aris- ing out of the nature of medical research ; and in this c