60 



Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who early in the seven- 

 teenth century attended lectures at Padua, opined 

 that natural science deals with "ignoble studies, 

 not proportioned to the dignity of our Souls/' 

 In the eighteenth century indeed, grave English 

 physicians, humanists who forgot how Aristotle had 

 exclaimed that marvellousness lies in all natural 

 phenomena, scorned the trivial curiosity of John 

 Hunter respecting flies and tadpoles. 



It is part of my argument to-day to point out 

 one evil of many which this prejudice has wrought 

 for medicine. The progress of an applied science 

 dependent as it is upon accessions of advantage 

 from other arts, yet on the whole is from the 

 simple to the complex ; from facts of more direct 

 observation to those of longer inference : and this 

 path was the more necessary when the right method 

 of inference the so-called inductive method had 

 not been formulated, and indeed was barely in use. 

 Now in medicine, from Homer to Lord Lister, 

 direct observation and the simpler means of ex- 

 periment have obtained their first-fruits on the 

 surface of the body. In Homeric times surgery 

 was the institution of medicine, and kings con- 



