Imagination and idealism in the medical sciences / [by] Christian A. Herter ... An address delivered to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, Sept. 23, 1909, at the opening of the medical school.

  • Herter, Christian Archibald, 1865-1910.
Date:
[1910?]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Imagination and idealism in the medical sciences / [by] Christian A. Herter ... An address delivered to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, Sept. 23, 1909, at the opening of the medical school. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    shallow and trivial people. Helmholtz was an idealist of the purest type, and never permitted personal inter- est to interfere with his best aims as a student of science. His was a poetic nature, apt in versification and in music, yet with an intellect so searching that he was not entirely satisfied by esthetic feeling and phantasy, but sought also to understand them. Modesty was one of his greatest charms, and this quality was attractively seen in the sentiment which he expressed on being awarded the von Graefe medal in recognition of his services to medicine through the invention of the ophthalmoscope: Let us suppose that up to the time of Phidias nobody has had a chisel sufficiently hard to work on marble. Up to that time they would only mold clay or carve wood. But a clever smith discovers how a chisel can be tempered. Phidias rejoices over the improved tools, fashions with them his god-like statues and manipulates the marble as no one has ever before done. He is honored and rewarded. But great geniuses are modest just in that in which they most excel others. That very thing is so easy for them that they can hardly under- stand why others cannot do it. But there is always associated with high endowments a correspondingly great sensitiveness for the defects of one's own work. Thus, says Phidias to the smith, Without your aid I could have done nothing of that; the honor and glory belong to you. But the smith can only answer him, But I could not have done it even with my chisels, whereas you, without my chisels, could at least have molded your wonderful works in clay; therefore I must decline the honor and glory, if I will remain an honorable man. But now Phidias is taken away, and there remain his friends and pupils—Praxiteles, Paionios, and others. They all use the chisel of the smith. The world is filled with their work and their fame. They determine to honor the memory of the deceased with a garland which he shall receive who has done