The position and prospects of rational medicine : an oration delivered before the members of the Hunterian Society, on the 15th February, 1860 / by Stephen H. Ward.

  • Ward, Stephen Henry, 1819-1880.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The position and prospects of rational medicine : an oration delivered before the members of the Hunterian Society, on the 15th February, 1860 / by Stephen H. Ward. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    6/42 (page 6)
    lias been mainly effected, contain within themselves the elements of abuse. We are too ready, our younger and less experienced brethren especially, to exchange the old and tried for the more fascinating new lamps, to be attracted by that which is tangible, which speaks directly and speciously to the mind, and through the exercise of the special faculties of sight, hearing, and touch, conveys the present sense of power, than by the larger contemplation of complex phenomena, and the postponed conclusions it entails. A short portion of the time allotted me will not, therefore, I think, be mis- applied, in reviewing what some of these new means of investigation have done, and are yet likely to do, and in what respects they appear to me to fail or be abused. Upon the great value of the stethoscope and specula for various purposes, it will be unnecessary to dwell, nor shall I do more than allude to the abuse of a special application of the latter in the hands of unprincipled practitioners, which should rather present itself under the ethical division of my subject. I pass on to the consideration of the Microscope and Chemistry in their application to medicine. Although not a very energetic worker at the Micro- scope, I have gladly availed myself of it in medical in- vestigation, and some of my earliest and most pleasing- associations are with it, and with the new fields of knowledge which, in the extension of our sphere of vision, it has opened up. I acknowledge the great services it has rendered, and must yet render to science. In regard to what more immediately concerns us, I