Authority in medicine : old and new / by Major Greenwood.

  • Greenwood, Major, 1880-1949.
Date:
1943
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Authority in medicine : old and new / by Major Greenwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I am not seeking to insinuate that new scientific know¬ ledge has not directly aided the prophylaxis and treatment of Pulmonary Tuberculosis; of course it has, everyone in the audience can think of examples. Then in acute infec¬ tious diseases, like Typhus, pure laboratory work has created an applied science of immunology which owes nearly everything to the experimental method. Those who exalt pure reason unduly may say that a first-rate reasoner might have deduced from centuries-old experience of smallpox inoculation, a complete science of immunology. Nobody did, however. Untested hypotheses, ingenious speculations, have no emotional drive. Experiments have. But even in the essentially modern triumph of active im¬ munisation, there have been disappointments due to logical weakness whether in the interpretation of the data or, still more frequently, in the generalisation of correct in¬ ferences to groups not in pari materia with the experi¬ mental data. Laboratory bacteriologists, field epidemiologists, even statistical epidemiologists, have often been led by their respective herd and individual vanities to claim special authority for their several methods of research. That is why epidemiology is still in its infancy; an imperfect co-operation of efforts each good. The authority of ancient books is dead, but the authority for which herd vanity and individual vanity hunger is alive. I turn to the last of these Hydra heads of which I desire to speak—the authority of intention. A few years ago, praise of scientific research for its own