632 Medicine as a Science, and as a Trade. [JUNE, 



these doctrines are, few, I believe, can give a satisfactory reply. In 

 Great Britain we might compare the nosology of system (if we may use 

 such an expression) with the nosology of disease: every school and every 

 professor have their theories, to which they refer every disease. The 

 universities seem to teach medicines without fixed principles, vacillating 

 between the spasm of Cullen, the humoralism of Galen, and the direct 

 and indirect debility of Brown. The discoveries of the last two thousand 

 years have, doubtless, contributed much to the knowledge of man's 

 physical organisation, and perhaps to the modification of certain diseases; 

 but, comparing the mortality of the earliest ages with that of the present, 

 we shall, with very few exceptions, have little cause to boast our supe- 

 rior treatment. The Greek and Arabian physicians, though deprived of 

 the aid of anatomy, chemistry, and, to a certain extent, of physiology, 

 have, notwithstanding, left the best descriptions of some eruptive and 

 contagious diseases. Long subsequent to the days of Hippocrates, the 

 Arabians taught medicine in many of the hospitals, founded by the 

 Mahommedans, though we do not find any account of a regular clinique 

 either with them or the Greeks. 



Upon the revival of letters in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, medi- 

 cine again began to assume a degree of interest. Its professors were chiefly 

 engaged in explaining the Arabian commentators of Galen j at length 

 they found that from the book of nature only could medicine be studied, 

 with the hope of ever arriving at the dignity of a science. They turned 

 to nature, and their investigations were successful. Clinical medicine 

 was then established, first by Francis de la Boie, at Leyden, next by 

 Boerhaave, who taught it in the same hospital ; shortly after it spread to 

 Vienna and Edinburgh, in which latter place it flourished with great 

 celebrity. In 1753, Van Sweitin established an hospital at Vienna which 

 was successively occupied by Dehaen, Stoll, and Hildenbrand, for cli- 

 nical instruction. In 1794, the first valuable clinic was established at 

 Paris, though Desbois and Corvisart gave clinical lectures to their pupils. 

 France has now assumed a rank in her clinique, immeasurably above 

 every other country in Europe. Here are to be met men of every caste 

 and nation, walking her splendid hospitals and crowding her valuable 

 lecture rooms. France, prodigal of every thing that can improve the 

 moral or physical condition of man, considers all her institutions as the 

 joint stock property of mankind in general; well might she say <f Human! 

 nihil a me alienum puto." Here, then, are clinical lectures, not only on 

 medicine and surgery in general, but upon all the different branches of 

 each, and one in particular, on old age, which is not to be met in any other 

 city in Europe. 



Let us now turn to the state of medical clinics amongst ourselves, 

 and we must exclaim with Sterne, " They manage these things better in 

 France.' 1 The only clinic in this country that merits any notice is the 

 Edinburgh ; there the lectures are replete with great practical expe- 

 rience and erudition, but differ from the French clinique in this particu- 

 lar, in not being given immediately after the visit, when the different 

 phases of the disease are fresh on the minds of the students. The clinical 

 lectures are given here only two days of the week : this is to be lamented, 

 because here only (Edinbugh) every branch connected with the study of 

 medicine may be learned with great advantage. Medicine, as a science., is 

 fast improving in the other schools of Great Britain, with the exception of 



