362 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE VALUE OF KESEARCH IN THE DEVELOPMENT OP 



NATIONAL HEALTH 1 



By Professor BENJAMIN MOORE, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S. 



UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LIVERPOOL 



THE history of medical science presents to the curious student a re- 

 markable development commencing in the latter half of the nine- 

 teenth century, and one worthy of special study, both on account of the 

 light that it sheds on the present position and the illumination it affords 

 for future progress. 



If any text-book of medicine or treatise on any branch of medical 

 science written before 1850 be taken up at random its pages will reveal 

 that it differs but little from one written a full century earlier. If such 

 a volume be compared with one written thirty-five years later, it will be 

 found that the whole outlook and aspect of medicine have changed within 

 a generation. 



Erroneous introspective dreams as to the nature of diseases as " idio- 

 pathic " as the many strange maladies which their authors are so fond of 

 describing have been replaced by fast-proven facts and medicine has 

 passed from an occult craft into an exact science based upon experi- 

 mental inquiry and logical deduction from observation. 



What caused this rapid spring of growth after the long latent period 

 of centuries, and are we now reaching the end of the new era in medicine, 

 or do fresh discoveries still await the patient experimentalist with a 

 trained imagination who knows both how to dream and how to test his 

 dreams ? 



It is but a crude comparison that represents the earlier age as one of 

 empiricism and imagination, and the later period as one of induction 

 and experiment. Empiricism has always been of high value in science, 

 it will ever remain so, and some of the richest discoveries in science 

 have arisen empirically. 



Imagination also is as essential to the highest scientific work to-day 

 as it was a century ago, and throughout all time the work of the genius 

 is characterized in all spheres of human endeavor by the breadth and 

 flight of the imagination which it shows. The great scientist, whether 

 he be a mathematician, a physicist, a chemist, or a physiologist, requires 

 imagination to pierce forward into the unknown, just as truly as does 

 the great poet or artist. Also, the inspired work of poet or painter must 

 be concordant with a system of facts or conventions, and not outrage 



1 Address of the president to the Physiological Section of the British As- 

 sociation for the Advancement of Science, Australia, 1914. 



