304: 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



a certain quantity of objective historical truth, | 

 and on the other a variable series of subjective 

 and often very fantastic ideas. In this ecclesi- 

 astical and scientific doctrines are alike. The 

 cause of this is that the human mind is one, and 

 that it carries the method which it follows in one 

 domain finally into all the others as well. Still vve 

 must always have clear ideas as to how far each of 

 the directions mentioned extends in the different 

 domains. Thus, for example, in the ecclesiastical 

 domain — for in this it is most easily exemplified 

 — we have the special dogma, the so-called posi- 

 tive belief: of this I need not speak. But each 

 church has furthermore its peculiar historical 

 side. It says, " This has happened, this has 

 occurred, these events have taken place." This 

 historical truth is not only handed down, but 

 makes its appearance in the garb of an objec- 

 tive truth, with definite evidences. This is the 

 case with the Christian religion just as much as 

 with the Mohammedan, with Judaism as with 

 Buddhism. On the other side we find the left 

 wing as it were, where subjectivity reigns ; there 

 the individual dreams, there visions come and 

 hallucinations. One religion promotes them by 

 special drugs, another by abstinence, etc. Thus 

 subjective individual currents are developed, which 

 occasionally assume the shape of perfectly in- 

 dependent phenomena existing by the side of 

 and apart from the previous ecclesiastical do- 

 main, which at times are rejected as heresies, but 

 which often enough merge into the main current 

 of the recognized church-doctrine. All this we 

 find again in natural science. There too we have 

 the current of dogma, there too we have the cur- 

 rents of objective and subjective doctrines. Con- 

 sequently our task is a compound one. First of 

 all we try to reduce the dogmatic current. The 

 principal aim of science has for centuries been to 

 strengthen more and more the risht, the conser- 

 vative side. This side, which collects the ascer- 

 tained facts with full consciousness of the evi- 

 dences ; which adheres to experiment as the highest 

 means of proof ; which is in possesssion of the 

 real scientific treasury, has steadily grown larger 

 and broader, and this principally at the expense 

 of the dogmatic stream. Really, if we only con- 

 sider the number of natural sciences which since 

 the end of the last century have grown and now 

 flourish, we must admit that an almost incredi- 

 ble revolution has taken place. 



There is no science in which this is so emi- 

 nently evident as in medicine, because that is the 

 only science which has a continuous history of 

 nearly 3,000 years. We are, so to speak, the 



patriarchs of science, inasmuch as we have the 

 dogmatic current at its longest. This current 

 was so strong that, in the early part of the mid- 

 dle ages, even the Catholic Church embraced it, 

 and the heathen Galen appeared like a father of 

 the Church in the ideas of men ; indeed, if we 

 read the poems of that period, he often presents 

 himself exactly in the position of a father of the 

 Church. Medical dogma persisted until the time 

 of the Reformation. Vesalius and Paracelsus, 

 who were Luther's contemporaries, made the first 

 grand attempts at reduction ; they drove piles 

 into the bed of the dogmatic stream, constructed 

 dikes by its sides, and left only a narrow chan- 

 nel. Beginning with the sixteenth century, it has 

 grown narrower and narrower every century, so 

 that finally only a very small chancel has remained 

 for the therapeutists. So passes away earthly 

 glory. 



Only 30 years ago the Hippocratic method 

 was spoken of as something so sublime and im- 

 portant that nothing more sacred could be imag- 

 ined. Nowadays we must own that this method 

 is annihilated nearly down to its root. At least, 

 a good deal of imagination is necessary if we say 

 that any physician of the present day acts as Hip- 

 pocrates did. Indeed, if we compare the medi- 

 cine of to-day with the medicine of the year 1S0O 

 — it so happened that the year 1800 marks a 

 great turning-point in medicine — we find that our 

 science has undergone a complete reformation 

 during the last *70 years. At that time the great 

 Paris school was formed, immediately under the 

 influence of the French Revolution, and we must 

 admire the genius of our neighbors that enabled 

 them to find all at once the fundamental basi8 of 

 an entirely new science. If now we see medi- 

 cine continue its development in the greater 

 breadth of objective knowledge, we must never 

 forget that the French were the precursors, as in 

 the middle ages the Germans were. 



In citing medicine as an example, I only wished 

 to show you in brief what changes have come 

 about both in the methods and in the data of sci- 

 ence. I am confident that in medicine, by the 

 close of this century, there will remain only so 

 much of the dogmatic current as might easily 

 pass through a water-main. For the rest, the ob- 

 jective current will probably altogether swallow 

 up the dogmatic. 



The subjective stream will still, perhaps, re- 

 main. Perhaps even then many an individual will 

 dream his beautiful dreams. The field of objec- 

 tive facts in medicine, great as it has become, has 

 yet left such a number of lateral fields, that for 



