The Evolution of Modern Medicine: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Yale University on the Silliman Foundation in April, 1913Osler, William, Sir
History
The Evolution of Modern Medicine: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Yale University on the Silliman Foundation in April, 1913
Osler, William, Sir
Medicine -- History
Livingstone discusses the Greek Genius as displayed to us in certain
"notes"--the Note of Beauty--the Desire for Freedom--the Note
of Directness--the Note of Humanism--the Note of Sanity and of
Many-sidedness. Upon some of these characteristics we shall have
occasion to dwell in the brief sketch of the rise of scientific medicine
among this wonderful people.
We have seen that the primitive man and in the great civilizations of
Egypt and Babylonia, the physician evolved from the priest--in Greece
he had a dual origin, philosophy and religion. Let us first trace the
origins in the philosophers, particularly in the group known as the
Ionian Physiologists, whether at home or as colonists in the south of
Italy, in whose work the beginnings of scientific medicine may be found.
Let me quote a statement from Gomperz:
"We can trace the springs of Greek success achieved and maintained
by the great men of Hellas on the field of scientific inquiry to a
remarkable conjunction of natural gifts and conditions. There was the
teeming wealth of constructive imagination united with the sleepless
critical spirit which shrank from no test of audacity; there was the
most powerful impulse to generalization coupled with the sharpest
faculty for descrying and distinguishing the finest shades of phenomenal
peculiarity; there was the religion of Hellas, which afforded complete
satisfaction to the requirements of sentiment, and yet left the
intelligence free to perform its destructive work; there were the
political conditions of a number of rival centres of intellect, of
a friction of forces, excluding the possibility of stagnation, and,
finally, of an order of state and society strict enough to curb the
excesses of 'children crying for the moon,' and elastic enough not to
hamper the soaring flight of superior minds.... We have already made
acquaintance with two of the sources from which the spirit of criticism
derived its nourishment--the metaphysical and dialectical discussions
practiced by the Eleatic philosophers, and the semi-historical method
which was applied to the myths by Hecataeus and Herodotus. A third
source is to be traced to the schools of the physicians. These aimed at
eliminating the arbitrary element from the view and knowledge of nature,
the beginnings of which were bound up with it in a greater or less
degree, though practically without exception and by the force of an
inner necessity. A knowledge of medicine was destined to correct that
defect, and we shall mark the growth of its most precious fruits in the
increased power of observation and the counterpoise it offered to hasty
generalizations, as well as in the confidence which learnt to reject
untenable fictions, whether produced by luxuriant imagination or by
a priori speculations, on the similar ground of self-reliant
sense-perception."(3)
(3) Gomperz: Greek Thinkers, Vol. I, p. 276.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account