MEDICINE VERSUS ART 



19 



stop talking, to listen to music. For what is the good of talking 

 about music? Let us listen. Take the Jhird piano cfuartet in C 

 minor (op. 60) . When Brahms sent the finished work to Billroth 

 in 1874 he wrote: ff I am showing you the quartet purely as a curi- 

 osity! An illustration as it were, to the last chapter of the man in 

 a blue swallow tail and yellow waistcoat. . . " Or take the two 

 Rhapsodies for piano, dedicated to Frau Elisabeth von Herzogen- 

 berg (op. 19, c. 1878). Listen, and remember Billroth's comment: 

 "In these two pieces there lingers more of the titanic young 

 Brahms than in the last works of his maturity." Without the 

 music itself, either present or remembered, these words are mean- 

 ingless, and there is no point in quoting more. 



Let us return to the history of medicine. I am afraid that many 

 physicians think of it too much in terms of a list of discoveries 

 and achievements. In fact, such lists have been compiled in such a 

 dry and impersonal manner that the names of physicians asso- 

 ciated with each "item" might almost be replaced by an x, y, or z. 

 Such lists are useful, but they are to the history of medicine hardly 

 more than a skeleton is to a living body. The skeleton is indispen- 

 sable to be sure, but insufficient. 



A mere list of discoveries is a falsification of the history of 

 medicine, even from the purely scientific point of view, for such 

 a list exaggerates the discontinuities in medical progress. A deeper 

 study of almost any discovery reveals that what we call the dis- 

 covery is only the final clinching of an argument developed by 

 many men throughout a long period of time. However, such a 

 list is a far greater falsification from the broad human point of 

 view. 



The history of science, and in particular the history of medi- 

 cine (we can not repeat it too often) is not simply an account of 

 discoveries. Its purpose is to explain the development of the scien- 

 tific spirit, the history of man's reactions to truth, the history of 

 the gradual revelation of truth, the history of the gradual libera- 

 tion of our minds from darkness and prejudice. Discoveries are 

 evanescent, for they are soon replaced by better ones. The his- 



