October 12, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



459 



The first clear note, which has rung down 

 the ages, was sounded by Hippocrates when 

 he taught the value of the inductive 

 method by simple, objective study of the 

 symptoms of disease, and the cry 'Back to 

 Hippocrates' has more than once recalled 

 medicine from dogmas and systems into 

 sane and rational paths. Medicine, how- 

 ever, was handed on from the Greeks and 

 Romans in bondage to a system of doctrine, 

 constructed by Galen, so completely satis- 

 fying to the medieval mind that this sys- 

 tem remained practically untouched for 

 over a thousand years. 



With the liberation of intellect through 

 the renaissance came the great emancipa- 

 tors, in the sixteenth century, Vesalius and, 

 in the seventeenth, Harvey, the former 

 placing human anatomy upon a firm 

 foundation and bringing medicine into 

 touch with the most solid basis of fact in 

 its domain, the latter bringing to light in 

 the demonstration of the circulation of the 

 blood the central fact of physiology and 

 applying for the first time in a large and 

 fruitful way to medicine the most power- 

 ful lever of scientific advance, the method 

 of experiment. 



In the century of Galileo, Harvey and 

 Newton instruments of precision as the 

 chronometer, the thermometer, the balance, 

 the microscope, were first applied to the 

 investigation of medical problems, and 

 physics began to render those services to 

 medicine which, continued from Galileo to 

 Rontgen, have been of simply incalculable 

 value. The debt of medicine to chemistry 

 began even with the rise of alchemy, re- 

 ceived an immense increment from the re- 

 searches of Lavoisier, the founder of 

 modern chemistry, concerning the func- 

 tion of respiration and the sources of ani- 

 mal heat, and has grown unceasingly and 

 to enormous proportions up to these days 

 of physical chemistry, which has found 



such important applications in physiology 

 and pathology. 



How disastrous may be to medicine the 

 loss of the sense of unity in all its branches 

 has been very clearly and admirably shown 

 by Professor Allbutt in depicting the 

 effects which for centuries followed the 

 casting off from medicine of surgery as a 

 subject unworthy the attention of the med- 

 ical faculty. Thereby internal medicine 

 lost touch with reality and the inductive 

 method, and remained sterile and fantastic 

 until the days of Harvey, Sydenham and 

 Boerhaaye. The services of surgery to 

 medicine as a whole, so brilliantly exempli- 

 fied in the experimental work of John 

 Hunter in the eighteenth century, have be- 

 come a distinguishing feature of the medi- 

 cine of the present day. 



The great awakening of clinical medicine 

 came in the early part of the nineteenth 

 century from the introduction of the new 

 methods of physical diagnosis by Laennec 

 and from pathological anatomy. The sub- 

 sequent development of scientific and prac- 

 tical medicine has far exceeded that of all 

 the preceding centuries. It has kept pace 

 with the progress during the same wonder- 

 ful century of all the sciences of nature 

 and has contributed even more to the pro- 

 motion of human happiness. 



In anatomy with embryology and his- 

 tology, in physiology, pathology, physiolog- 

 ical chemistry, pharmacology, hygiene, 

 bacteriology — sciences which are ancillary 

 to medicine and at the same time impor- 

 tant branches of biological science — there 

 have been marvellous activity and expan- 

 sion. For physiology and the under- 

 standing of disease the establishment of 

 the cell doctrine by the aid of botany, 

 embryology and pathology has been the 

 greatest achievement. By the combined 

 aid of physiology, physiological chemistry, 

 experimental pathology, improved methods 



