2 THE I5IRTH AND GROWTH OF SCIENCE IN MEniCINE 



of names it is because I believe that the founder of this 

 Oration would himself have been the first to recognise 

 that our intellectual heritage is a treasure of greater 

 worth than material possessions. The great men of the 

 past, to whose labours we owe the development of medical 

 science, have been benefactors of this College, and of all 

 that it represents, in a nobler sense. Harvey was one, 

 and not the least, among them, and I conceive that I cannot 

 more fittingly honour his memory than by devoting this 

 oration to the inward spirit which has animated the 

 progress of medical science. Many great names stand 

 along the centuries, marking the toilsome and broken 

 road by which our science has reached its present position, 

 and Harvey is worthy of his company. 



It is natural that, as a pathologist, I should take the 

 more purely scientific aspect of medicine as the subject 

 of my discourse, and it will be proper in the first place 

 to consider the position which medicine occupies amongst 

 the sciences. We are accustomed to speak of the " art 

 and science of medicine," perhaps without reflecting upon 

 where the art begins and the science leaves off. A body of 

 facts in any branch of knowledge, however thoroughly their 

 truth has been established, does not of itself constitute 

 a science. Science lies in the way the facts are treated. 

 They need to be classified and viewed in their mutual 

 relations : then, by appropriate reasoning, it is sought 

 to formulate the general laws which govern the province 

 of Nature studied. The aim of science is to discover 

 the "Laws of Nature," and in its truest though narrowest 

 sense it is the pursuit of this knowledge for its own sake, 

 irrespective of any practical use to which it may be put. 



The primary aim of medicine is the practical one of 

 healing the sick or preventing disease, and therefore, in 

 the narrower sense, medicine is not a science but an art. 

 Physiology, pathology and pharmacology are sciences in 

 the strictest sense : medicine is the art of applying the 

 laws established by these sciences to the prevention and 

 cure of disease ; more than this, it is the very human art 



