THE PROBLEMS OF INTERNAL MEDICINE 



BY WILLIAM SYDNEY THAYER 



[William Sydney Thayer, Professor of Clinical Medicine, Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity, Baltimore, Maryland ; Associate Physician, Johns Hopkins Hos- 

 pital, 'ibid. b. Milton, Massachusetts, June 23, 1864. A.B. Harvard, 1885; 

 M.D. ibid. 1889; studied in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris ; House Physician, 

 Massachusetts General Hospital, 1888-89; Resident Physician, Johns Hop- 

 kins Hospital, 1891-98; Associate in Medicine, Johns Hopkins University; 

 1895-96; Associate Professor of Medicine, ibid. 1896-1905; Visiting Physician, 

 Union Protestant Infirmary. Member (Honorary) of Therapeutical Society of 

 Moscow; Association of American Physicians; Medical and Chirurgical Faculty 

 of Maryland; American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists; Wash- 

 ington Academy of Sciences; American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Author 

 of The Malarial Fevers of Baltimore (with John Hewetson); Lectures on the 

 Malarial Fevers.] 



To recognize, to prevent, to protect, to heal these are, in the 

 broadest sense, the tasks of internal medicine now as ever. But 

 how different are the problems which occupy our attention to-day 

 from those of the period commemorated by this Congress. Let us 

 for a moment glance back at the medicine of the close of the eight- 

 eenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. For over two 

 hundred years the blind and binding faith of the Middle Ages, the 

 faith that had so long fettered the human mind, had been slowly 

 giving way before the forces of reason and truth. Now and again 

 with ever increasing frequency, great and courageous minds had 

 risen above the clouds of medical tradition and dogma which had 

 smothered the understanding and reason of mankind, as if, indeed, 

 medicine were a part of the religious doctrine which ruled the world. 

 For truly the medicine of the Middle Ages was largely a matter of 

 faith, and as a matter of faith one in which reason beyond a cer- 

 tain point was heresy and sacrilege. Vesalius with genius and cour- 

 age had begun to withdraw the veil from naked and iconoclastic 

 truth. Harvey had made his great discovery. Glisson had demon- 

 strated his theory of irritability. Mayow, with his "Spiritus nitro- 

 aereus," had anticipated the discovery of oxygen. Leeuwenhoek 

 and Malpighi and Hooke had opened to the human eye the realm 

 of the infinitely small. Bacon and Descartes and Newton and 

 Locke had introduced into the world a rational and natural philo- 

 sophy. Locke, himself indeed a wise physician, had pointed clearly 

 to the true path of medical progress. "Were it my business," says 

 he, "to understand physick, would not the safer way be to con- 

 sult nature herself, in the history of diseases and their cures, than 

 espouse the principles of the dogmatists, methodists, or chymists?" 

 But the clouds of medical tradition were slow to clear away. 



