Page:The Thruston speech on the progress of medicine 1880.djvu/7



So great has been the progress—or I would rather say the development, of the theory and practice of medicine during the past three or four hundred years—that we physicians of the nineteenth century, while fully admitting our own want of true knowledge, can with but difficulty, appreciate the gross ignorance and superstition, which prevailed even among the most educated classes, at the time of the birth of our founder, which I may remind you took place on the sixth day of October, 1510.

We may, indeed, obtain some slight insight into the general state of ignorance which existed at this time, by glancing at an Act of Parliament, which became law B 2