Report of the Standing Committee on Medical Literature ... presented to the American Medical Association, at its third annual meeting, held in Cincinnati, May, 1850.

Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Standing Committee on Medical Literature ... presented to the American Medical Association, at its third annual meeting, held in Cincinnati, May, 1850. 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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    REPORT OF TIIE The Monograph of Dr. Carnochan on Congenital Dislocations of the Femur belongs to a class of hooks which has but few represent- atives in this country. Treatises on special subjects have a limited circulation at first, but, if meritorious, grow more valuable by the lapse of time. The present one treats of a disease which does not appear to have attracted much attention from English or American surgeons. It augments the knowledge previously derived from con- tinental authorities, by the personal and well-recorded experience of the author, and its execution is, in all respects, deserving of praise. The preceding survey of a portion of our medical literature sug- gests some general reflections to which we beg leave to draw the attention of the Association. In its widest sense, literature may be defined “ the knowledge imparted through books.” It is the principal medium through which mind acts on mind ; it is the creative spirit which evokes from the shapeless mass of barbarism the beautiful forms of civilization. It is the most enduring monument which a nation can raise to per- petuate the memory and example of its noble deeds. When the marble temple and the bronze statue have crumbled, when even the lineage of a nation has disappeared and its language ceased to be a mother tongue, its literature may still survive, and transmit the impress of its mind to the latest generations. The mind and man- ners of Greece still stand before us in living pictures, while the cotemporary empires of the East, which far outshone the little States of the Peninsula in all the elements of mere material gran- deur, would now be utterly unknown, had not their names been em- balmed in the writings of a people they affected to despise. How wonderful and instructive is the reflection that the tiny republic of Athens should at this moment fill so large a space in the world’s reverence, and still govern mankind with so predominant a sway, while the splendid kingdoms of Darius and Cyrus should have so faded from remembrance that the very Arab, encamping upon their buried capitals, is unconscious of the city that slumbers beneath his tent! A certain number of nations, it has been remarked, bear the decisive stamp of their inferiority, their improgressiveness. But “ the nations that are historic and progressive contain in them- selves the means and instruments by which their progress may be effectuated, namely, literature; literature as connecting one nation