Page:The healing art in its historic and prophetic aspects - the Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Oct. 19, 1885 (IA b21908199).pdf/16

 criticism. Trust not the physician,' said Timon to the banditti; his antidotes are poisons, and he slays more than you rob.' The opinion entertained of our profession by Molière is too familiar to need repetition; whilst Vol- taire tersely described our practice as 'pouring drugs of which we know little into bodies of which we know less." The late Dr. Arnold wrote not so long ago: "The philosophy of medicine, I imagine, is almost at zero; our practice is empirical, and seems hardly more than a course of guessing more or less happy.' (1) I might easily extend this list, but there is probably no question more comprehensive and more damaging in its inference than that asked by the late Sir William Hamilton: 'Has the practice of medicine made a single step since Hippocrates?' Embodying as it does the essence of adverso criticism, and coming from so high an authority, I nevertheless hope to succeed in showing how utterly unfounded is the suggestion which it embodies. The tone of low esteem which runs throughout these quotations, often the reflex of current opinion, as well as of that of the individual, compels an attempt on our part to trace the causes to which it may be attributed. These, I think, may be considered as threefold in their cha- racter: first, the very course and progress of the science and art of medicine itself from the earliest times to the present day; secondly, the amazing credulity of the mass of mankind; and thirdly, the obstinate and unreasoning incredulity of no inconsiderable minority.

In looking back on the history of our art we may remember how it was believed to have emerged from the clouds, and how those who practised it were regarded as gods; how subsequently in the hands of Hippocrates the art first assumed the form of a science, and was by him and his immediate successors pursued on a line of careful observation, influenced by, but not entirely subjugated to, the prevailing philosophical speculations on the nature of