SCIENCE. 



521 



SCIENCE: 



AWeekly Record of Scientific 

 Progress. 



JOHN MICHELS, Editor. 



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Published at 

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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1881. 



SCIENCE AND MEDICINE. 

 A few words on the relation of the natural sciences 

 to medicine, as one of the greatest aids for the achieve- 

 ment of success, should be welcome reading to all 

 members of the medical profession whose aspirations 

 are above the dead level of mediocrity. 



The physician may at first sight desire to stifle all 

 discussion on this point by saying, that the require- 

 ments of study involved in acquiring a knowledge of 

 medical practice per se occupy too much of his time to 

 admit of his taking up outside issues, which he con- 

 siders mere refinements of practice. There are 

 others who take the absurd view that, to add a know- 

 ledge of the natural sciences is to become in the 

 highest sense of the word a Chemist, a Physicist, or a 

 Biologist. Seeing that the attainment of a complete 

 knowledge of either of these sciences, is a work of a 

 life time, it is argued, that they are to be shunned as 

 impossibilities. 



The path of the would-be scientific medical man is 

 made clear by the encouraging words of one of his 

 own profession, Dr. G. Vivian Poore, M.R.C.P., who 

 says, there is a minimum of knowledge in this respect 

 which is sufficient to endow the physician with a 

 scientific grasp of his art. What is really wanted, is 

 sufficient knowledge to enable a medical man to read 

 these various sciences with intelligible results for him- 

 self, when he needs and as often as he desires to con- 

 sult them, to show him as objectively as possible, those 

 great principles which have already found application 

 in his healing art. This will lead him to think and 

 enable him to act with precision in any great emer- 

 gency. 



Let it be understood that there is no necessity for 

 cramming the head with a mass of details, and that our 



object is to enrich and not encumber the mind ot the 

 medical practitioner. 



To those who are ignorant of the advantages of 

 some knowledge of the natural sciences in medical 

 practices, the following observations of Dr. Poore may 

 be read with interest. 



" There are those who hold that the student of medicine 

 has but little need of special training in the natural 

 sciences, but such a position I believe to be untenable, and 

 if I have to say one thing more emphatically than another 

 to the first year's students, it is to advise them, not on any 

 account to neglect their purely scientific studies. They 

 are the very foundation of your professional knowledge, 

 and without a solid foundation, no firm or worthy super- 

 structure can be raised. 



How can a man hope to rightly comprehend that most 

 complicated of all machines, the human body, with its 

 levers, pumps.and elastic canals, unless he be first furnish- 

 ed with the principles of mechanics and hydraulics ? Who 

 will say that a proper knowledge of the eye, or of the 

 many optical instruments used in medicine, is attainable 

 without some acquaintance with the laws of light ; or 

 that the intricacies of the ear, and the art of auscultation 

 can at all be understood by him, who knows nothing of the 

 laws of sound. The laws of heat must be studied in order 

 to appreciate the difficult problems afforded by the animal 

 temperature, its variations in health and disease, and the 

 means of influencing it by therapeutic agents. Without 

 the principles of chemistry we should be intellectually lost 

 in the human laboratory, and unable to employ chemical 

 agencies in the treatment of disease ; and electricity is so 

 correlated with the other physical sciences, and of so 

 much service both in diagnosis and treatment, that its 

 separate study has also become essential. Neither can 

 we altogether neglect geology and meteorology, since con- 

 ditions of soil and atmosphere are now recognized as im- 

 portant factors in the causation and relief of suffering. 



It is scarcely necessary to insist on a knowledge of 

 those sciences which are called " biological." Anatomy 

 and Histology, formerly the mere handmaids of medi- 

 cine, but now recognized as sciences worthy of independ- 

 ent study, are as necessary to us as is a chart to the nav- 

 igator ; while Physiology, which teaches us the use and 

 mode of action of the anatomical and histological ele- 

 ments, is the medical praciitioner. 



Zoology and botany are not so absolutely necessary for 

 us as are the othei sciences, but it is evident that they are 

 very necessary as preliminary studies for the biologist, to 

 whom we look for instruction, for without a study of the 

 simple forms and conditions of life a proper understand- 

 ing of human anatomy and physiology is not attainable, 

 and in so far as they teach us the conditions of existence 

 of the various vegetable and animal parasites which 

 affect the human body, from micrococci upwards, they 

 are necessary for us as surgeons and physicians. This list 

 of sciences is truly formidable, but I nevertheless assert 

 that there can be no true study of medicine without a 

 knowledge of the principles of all of them ; and, for my 

 own part, I have never had any difficulty, as a teacher of 

 clinical medicine, in discriminating easily, by a perusal of 

 their clinical reports, between those students who have, 

 and those who have not, had an insight into the principles 

 of pure science. 



Scientific principles are to the physician and surgeon 

 what the sextant and compass are to the navigator. 

 Without them he cannot rise above the rank of a light- 

 erman or a ferryman, but must be content to remain a 

 mere " pill-monger," or a chirurgeon ol a base mechanic 

 sort. "With them he may fearlessly launch his bark upon 

 unknown seas, and may have the good fortune to extend 

 the frontiers of science, or discover, as it were, new conti- 

 nents, to give a wider scope to the art which he professes." 



