Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/552

534 medical lives; for the whole art and science of medicine must be founded on accurate observation. All careful students of medicine should be good and accurate note-takers; the practice of sketching and making diagrams of the things you are observing is a very valuable one to cultivate. In taking notes on your cases acquire the habit of putting your observations on paper while you have the patient before you; compare the diseased or injured part with the corresponding healthy part; and if both similar parts are affected, you must compare the)m with what you have learned to consider as a healthy ideal. If records are not made at the time they lose somewhat of their value, even if they are made within a few hours after the appearances observed have been described; but if left days or weeks and I know this is sometimes the case the imagination is left to fill in the details; and should they be left for a much longer period, it is perfectly astonishing what may not be described as facts, especially if the writer is anxious to make the accounts read well. I believe this is the reason why there is so much doubt about so-called facts; a good many of them are not facts at all, but merely expressions of a very fertile imagination. There is more truth in some of the stories of the Arabian Nights. A certain part of what has been called the new criticism of some ancient writings and records consists in trying to ascertain how soon after seeing these events did the eyewitness write the records. Of course a good deal of the value of these records depends upon the decision of such a point how much and how little has the imagination taken part in the evolution of these so-called records of well-authenticated facts? Then, in describing your cases, do not use language that lends itself to exaggeration. Whenever you can put down actual measurements and actual figures it is much better to do so.

According to the statistical tables of some operations and new methods of treatment one finds all the cases, or a large majority of them, classed under the heading of "cured." This is a very unfortunate word, for it appears to have a variety of meanings; and what one person understands as a cure certainly would not come up to the standard of another. I often wonder if the notes of some of the failures have not been lost or if the cases of failure have not been removed, because, for some reason or other, they do not quite come within the category of the title-heading selected for these tables. We do not find many statistical tables of failures. When one reads these accounts one wonders if they were written for the purpose of finding out the truth, or was there some other motive? Macaulay, in his essay on Gladstone on Church and State, has a passage which I think I may aptly quote here: "It seems quite clear that an inquirer who has no wish except to know the truth is more likely to arrive at the truth