Brief History of Medicine
Great honour is, unquestionably, due to those medical men who by their learning, counsel, and experience, have contributed so many and great things to the improvement of their profession. The art of healing may be considered as a legacy left to us by former ages and enriched by ancient writers, and no doubt ordained by a benevolent Creator for the benefit of His creatures, who, being endowed with reason, are enabled to prosecute Medicine and the collateral sciences with wonderful sagacity. The impossibility of learning medicine properly by experience alone, implies the necessity of studying both ancient and modern writers; but, in the words of Harvey, “men were not to swear such fealty to their mistress Antiquity, as openly and in sight of all to deny and desert their friend Truth.” Medical history unfortunately affords many examples of despisers of the mighty dead and of eminent living authorities. Paracelsus burnt the writings of Galen and Avicenna before his pupils, and proclaimed himself the king of medicine. Hahnemann much resembled Paracelsus, for he despised the inspection of dead bodies, and preferred the homœopathic doctrine to pathology; but both had dared to do “aliquid Gyaris vel carcere dignum.” Hahnemann’s doctrine, that numerous chronic diseases originated in the itch, was neither new, safe, nor true. Dr. C. G. Zieger had many years before promulgated the same idea in a dissertation published at Leipsic in 1758, without boasting, as the other did, that he was engaged twelve years in the discovery. False theories, however, with scientific pretensions, have flourished through many ages. Hence arose homœopathy, kinesipathy, table-turning, and various despicable “isms” of the present day. But, happily for the poor, at least, such lies could not exist in the schools of Harvey, Baillie, and Hunter. The low condition of medicine at the time of Linacre, and the improvement with the aid of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey, may next be mentioned. Linacre, the founder of the College, and Dean Colet, the founder of St. Paul’s School, of grateful memory to the orator, were among the first to restore ancient learning to this island. The College of Physicians having been established, its members were separated from vulgar empirics; but by a new law homœo-empirics may be registered, which was nothing less than legal homicide, and strongly to be protested against.—Harveian Oration, 1863.