HISTORY OF MEDICINE 231 



For a couple of generations its practice has been 

 based upon the results of experiment as well as 

 upon observation, and its progress has been rapid. 

 It will be found that most laymen in this country 

 who have not given thought to the matter vaguely 

 assume that the progress of medical knowledge 

 still depends solely or mainly upon the accumula- 

 tion of experience gained at the bedside. The 

 truth that untiring labour in scores of scientific 

 laboratories has been the chief factor in the rapid 

 progress of recent years has not yet come home to 

 the public. Experience at the bedside and the 

 habit of close observation are indeed essential for 

 the making of a successful physician. These and 

 these alone can qualify him for the successful 

 application of knowledge to the relief of human 

 suffering; but history shows that the knowledge 

 itself grew very slowly when bedside observations 

 were its chief source. 



In a short article no proper survey of the history 

 of medicine can be attempted, but it is desirable 

 that an attempt should be made to give some 

 indication of its position, and of the kind of progress 

 it was making, in the middle period of the last 

 century. It was then that experimental science 

 began for the first time to exert an appreciable 

 influence upon it. During the seventeenth century 

 the classical tradition which had been so fatal to 

 progress was very nearly slain; our countryman, 

 Harvey, giving it one of its most fatal wounds. 



