262 Dr, Mayo, on the Science and Practice of Medicine. [May 1 1 , 



Having given this account of the workings of the medical intellect, 

 he affirmed the misapprehension involved in the use of the term 

 " guessing," as sometimes applied to them. Truths of a high order, as 

 leading to most important results, have been inductively established, 

 which can be applied with great confidence to practice. But there is, 

 he says, one modification of medical thought, in the present day, which 

 certainly may deserve the name of mere guessing, and which advances 

 no pretensions to philosophy : one, which contemns all hypotheses as 

 to causes^ the only legitimate subject of treatment in medicine ; and 

 which, cataloguing symptoms and the presumed remedies for those 

 symptoms, prescribes from the catalogue. Such reasoning, he says, is 

 to be found in books purporting to convey the principles of homoeo- 

 pathy. 



As an element of the medical intellect required and developed in 

 actual practice and in medical research, the imagination has been al- 

 ready noticed. Its intellectual value in enabling the mind to realise 

 absent objects of perception, and its moral value in affording sources 

 of comfort to the sick, if judiciously managed, was insisted on. And 

 the speaker finished his analysis of the medical mind by strongly insist- 

 ing upon a just measure of its attention being given to the various 

 sciences, which lay claim to its pursuit ; so that undue predominance 

 may not be given to those which may happen to be most attractive, 

 or to afford most opportunities to the student of displaying brilliancy 

 in competitive examination. 



The next subject which engaged the speaker's attention, involves 

 a close reciprocity of action between the public and the medical pro- 

 fession. It is that of " specialties in practice." While on the one 

 hand the bent of the individual mind in favour of some one group of 

 cases and diseases for consideration and inquiry, may justly influence 

 the mind of the public in applying for medical advice ; on the other 

 hand, this tendency must not be gratified at the expense of compre- 

 hensiveness of knowledge. The tendency of the public to render the 

 subject of insanity or unsoundness of mind a specialty with this result, 

 was commented on. 



The public prevents those medical practitioners, who have gained 

 reputation in this specialty from becoming acquainted with other con- 

 terminous disease by excluding them from attendance on other dis- 

 eases ; and thus necessarily diminishes their power of diagnosis in 

 mental disease itself. Hence arises ignorance of practitioners both in 

 certifying the presence of insanity, and in giving evidence on it in 

 courts of justice. 



The relations of the public and the medical professions thus far 

 described, have been mainly intellectual. The moral duties incum- 

 bent on the profession have long been pressed upon the attention of 

 students in medicine, by lectures and the precepts of their instructors. 

 No corresponding enumeration of the duties owed by the public to the 

 profession exists. In regard to one, which appeared to the speaker to 

 have been peculiarly neglected, he thus expressed himself. " I will 



