764 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



THE EXACTNESS OF THE SCIENCE OF MEDICINE. 



BY S. D. BOWKER, M. D. , KANSAS CITY, MO. 



The frequent allusion to medical men as having pursued their studies in. 

 search of positive knowledge in vain, and the often repeated public and private 

 declaration that there is nothing of exactness in the diagnosis and treatment of 

 disease, together with the consent of many medical gentlemen themselves, that 

 the laity should hold them as " agnostics " except in a few simple matters about 

 which the opinions of non professionals are of equal value, prompt the writer to 

 make a few observations which may tend to place the physician in a more correct 

 light with those who may need his advice. Let us premise by the statement of 

 an everywhere observed fact, that those who know the least about a given sub- 

 ject are often loudest in disapproval of and disagreement with the opinions of pre- 

 vious investigators. And it is to them evidence of merit to be able to brand 

 the opinions and researches of their fathers as "leading nowhere" and as pos- 

 sessing no accuracy. 



It cannot be expected that any one not having given special study to our 

 profession will be able to give expression to very correct opinions of the various 

 departments taught by it, and it should be still more unlooked-for that one who 

 has spent a large pirt of his life in its practice, should have made so little prog- 

 ress in the direction of its mastery as to be betrayed into the declaration that 

 there is Httle or nothing in medical appliances worthy of the confidence of those 

 in need of a physician. The custom of selecting an orator, on the occasion of 

 the public graduation of a class of medical students, from the ranks of the legal 

 or clerical fraternity, is, no doubt, in bad taste, for these gentlemen are prone to 

 have " opinions of their own" about matters to which they have given but litde 

 thought. 



I protest against a general misrepresentation of a class of men whose studies 

 and labors have ripened into accurately formulated arts and sciences which 

 know no rival among the learned professions. If it is true, that, after more than 

 two thousand years of toil and unceasing research, we have reached no resting, 

 place, and that our visits to the sick are nothing more than artful deceptions by 

 which we obtain our "bread and butter," let us in honor to ourselves and duty to 

 our race, abandon our calling. But there is a brighter and truer side to this 

 question, which I propose to spread before the reader; a short outline of the pres- 

 ent status of medical knowledge ; not by the long and tedious line of investiga- 

 tion by which the facts have been reached, but by a simple display of the facts 

 as they now relate to the sciences and arts of our profession. What may have 

 been written or said, along the weary years of experimentation, by those who 

 truly felt that they had reached the bottom of but few subjects of inquiry, can 

 have no bearing against the position of this article, as touching the vast amount 

 of well- digested and accurately formulated material made ready for our use. 



