Part 42

Within the sphere of the specifically medical sciences themselves there are tendencies which are open to somewhat similar criticism.

The great fallacy from which scientific Medicine has suffered in the past, and still to some extent suffers, is the ‘direct attack’. We have come to look upon the animal organism as an immeasurably complex machine. For its elucidation knowledge from the most diverse quarters is therefore demanded. The physical chemist, the organic chemist, the physicist, the mathematician, the protozoologist, the systematic biologist, the botanist, the spectroscopist, the geologist, and a host of others are following callings which have no obvious bearing on the study of disease. Yet the results obtained by them, and by men of science in many other departments, must be utilized in the study of disease. Our knowledge of health and of disease thus depends on the sciences as a whole--nay, on Knowledge as a whole. Those who would promote the health of mankind would do well if they sought to encourage not so much the medical sciences as Science as a whole, or rather Learning as a whole, for Science is a way of life which may penetrate into all departments of Learning, and is something far greater than those discrete accumulations of knowledge that we call ‘the sciences’. The Sciences, working out their destiny, must in the end come together again.

If that consummation be reached we may expect improvement in health and prolongation of life to a degree greater than any previous ages have seen. We may indeed expect something yet better, for we may hope for a philosophy of the mind that shall make life better worth the living.

Medicine cannot give immortality, but it should enable us all to live out our full lives. Death, coming in due and not undue time, is shorn of all his terrors, when every man and every woman

Shall come to his grave in a full age, Like as a shock of corn cometh in, in his season. Job v. 26.

INDEX

Abdominal Surgery, 243-8

Achondroplasia, 17

Adrenals, 325

Aesculapius (Asklepios), 4, 7, 8, 11, 49, 51

Ague, see Malaria.

Air, Nature of, 151-6

Air-Pump, Boyle’s, 125-6

Albinus, Bernard Siegfried (1697-1770), 140-1

Albucasis the Moor (11th cent.), 67, 70

Alchemy, 122-6

Alcoholism, 291

Alexander the Great, 27, 36

Alexandria, 52

Alexandrian School, 36-41

Alkaloids, 325-7

Almond Oil, 322

Aloes, 322

Alum, 322

American Civil War, 300

Ammoniacum, 322

Amputation, 240, 336

Amyl nitrite, 329