Science and Medieval Thought: The Harveian Oration Delivered Before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900Allbutt, T. Clifford (Thomas Clifford)
Philosophy
Science and Medieval Thought: The Harveian Oration Delivered Before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900
Allbutt, T. Clifford (Thomas Clifford)
Philosophy, Medieval
[73] The _Consilia medica_, or Consultations, were published records,
either of particular cases or of diseases in a more general sense,
which seem to have been instituted by Thaddæus of Florence in the
thirteenth century, were abundant in the fifteenth, and were continued
into the sixteenth, and even later. In the fifteenth century these
records have a considerable historical value, and no little clinical
interest, as the questions to the patient and the records of symptoms
are often orderly and graphic, and enable the modern reader to revise
the diagnoses, many of them grotesque enough. These Consilia make a
great bulk of matter, and one which has not been thoroughly explored.
A general account of the Consilia may be read in any good history of
medicine, but perhaps the most interesting is to be found in the
chapters on medieval medicine in Daremberg’s “Histoire et Doctrines”
(e.g. tom. 1. p. 334 et seq.).
[74] Originally by Fracastorius, Montanus and others, in the former
half of the sixteenth century. Caius in England, Mercado in Spain,
Baillou in Paris, if not bedside teachers, had done good clinical
work, in Consilia and otherwise, in the same century. What
Fracastorius did for syphilis, Caius did for the sweating sickness,
and Mercado for petechial typhus. Baillou was too dependent upon the
letter of tradition.
[75] Even Descartes has some share with Hegel in the profound error
that whatsoever is clearly and definitely conceived is true. The
inference if true for formal logic, is not true for natural processes;
for instance, Descartes’ well-known attribution of the soul to the
pineal gland, because all other parts of the brain are double, and the
soul is single!
[76] “The share of Servetus was small”; that is, the effect of his
remarkable discovery was small, for it was buried in a theological
work of which but a few copies were rescued from the burning; namely
“Christianismi restitutio. Viennæ Allobrogum, 1553.” (Haeser gives the
reference to pp. 170-177, De Trinitate divina.) The work was reprinted
at Nuremberg in 1790.
[77] Quæ, simul æthereos animo conceperat ignes,
Ore dabat vero carmina plena dei.
Ovid, _Fasti_ I, 473.
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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