Roswell Park

“ To the period of worship of ancient authority succeeded one characterized by a desire to shake off the yoke of the same, and men now struggled, as it were, to free themselves from the tyranny of the past. As Galileo was the torch-bearer for regeneration of the knowledge of physics, and as Kepler, and others already named, or to be named, did as much for other branches of science, so there were not lacking those who broke away from the restraint of authority in medicine, and began to beat or choose paths for themselves among the facts which experimental science furnished them. ”

“ Lessons of great importance may be gathered from a more careful study of this great historical epoch, but they must be left to your own powers of reasoning rather than to what I may add here. I commend it to you as a fertile source of inspiration, and a line of research worthy of both admiration and imitation. Few men have rendered greater service to the world by the shedding of blood than did Harvey, in his innocent and wonderful studies of its natural movement. ”

“ My mind is freed from the necessity for the mysterious which the Graeco-Jewish people demanded, and which the superstitious people of to-day still demand, and I prefer to let him stand for what he seems to me to be,—the greatest moralist and teacher of all time, rather than to surround him with a veil of imagery and with statements so impossible of belief as to make it impossible to accept one part without accepting them all. ”

“ As for myself, I shall never believe I have profound knowledge of any affection if I do not know positively, just as if I could see it with my eyes, in what part of the human body is the disease, its primitive seat, what suspicion of organic lesions constitute it, whence it proceeded, if it exists idiopathically or by sympathy, or if it be kept up by some exterior cause. He who pretends to be a rational physician must sound each of these subjects, and discern them by certain signs. ”

“ One naturally inquires, then, what was the source of the wide-spread fame of Salerno as a school, since it was distinguished neither by notable discovery in science nor by celebrated teachers, and the predominant element was doubtless one of obstinate conservatism and unswerving devotion to ancient doctrines. Founded during the dark period of the Middle Ages, at a time when ignorance, bigotry, and superstition prevailed, it preserved, amidst the gloom that had settled upon Europe, a few rays of that intellectual light which had shown so brightly in the golden ages of Roman history. ”

“ Join the mind of a bigot to the body of one who knows not fear, and the result will be a Loyola, or a St. Louis of France, who held that the only argument a layman should engage in with a heretic should be a sword thrust through the body. If then heresy was a crime, punishable by a cruel death in all the capitals of Europe, let us blame less the men who were trained and grew up with these notions, but rather more the Church which preached them, whether Catholic or Protestant. Only if one of these really were, as it still claims to be, infallible, then what has become of its infallibility? ”

“ Fever was a salutary effort of the soul to preserve the body; this was true even of intermittents, and, accordingly, he never gave cinchona. He scorned anatomy and physiology, saying, in one place, that medicine had profited as much by the knowledge of the bones in the ear as by a knowledge of snow which had fallen ten years previously. But Stahl was one of the most eminent chemists of the age, and did a great deal to liberate chemistry from the glamour of alchemy and the domination of pharmacy, and to transform it into an independent science. ”

“ Moreover what keen and sensitive natures may do under the influence of torture is never to be predicated. How many of us could resist the persuasiveness of the rack when it came to modifying our beliefs? But whatever may have been his weakness at that time, he completely rehabilitated himself before his end, for were not his ashes scattered to the winds as a token that he completely failed to recant? Surely no martyr to science or dogma ever died a more dignified death, for the edification or example of others. ”

“ Their worship was mystical, but not because Jesus so taught;—rather because of their environment and traditions. The practice of baptism, the last supper and the doctrines of incarnation and resurrection have been as certainly added to the Nazarene's sublime code of ethics as to them in turn, in the centuries to follow, were added every conceivable notion, mystery and stupid absurdity which the diseased minds of men could imagine, and which have been the cause of more departure from Christ's original teachings, and of more strife and bloodshed than any other feature in the history of mankind. ”

“ Reverence for the true, the beautiful, and the good has characterized physicians in all times and climes. But little of the true, the beautiful, or the good crept into the transactions of the Church for many centuries, and we suffer, to-day, more from its interference in time past than from all other causes combined. The same may be said of theology, which is as separate from religion as darkness from light. Only when students of science emancipated themselves from the prejudices and superstitions of the theologians did medicine make more than barely perceptible progress. ”

“ THE STORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE CIRCULATION A Study of the Times and Labors of William Harvey [9]
History in general is but a record of the succession of great events or epochs which have moulded the world's affairs. That which is of the greatest import in the life of the individual may count for little in the lives of his contemporaries, and yet it must be said that in the events of to-day there has occurred a great epoch in the life of each of you, presumably the most important as yet in your personal records. ”

“ They evince more of humanity, more of real interest and care in their patients, and more consideration for their comfort and welfare; while, in all that pertains to fertility of invention, to originality of performance, and accuracy of work, they, as a rule, excel. Divested of glamour, American surgery, both general and special, is ahead of most of that which one can see abroad, and the therapeutics of the American profession certainly surpass those of any other nationality. ”

“ He believed that the essence of truth inhered in those differences which kept men apart, and still sever them. He believed the law of love and that it sprang from God, which is the Father of All, that it was in harmony with nature, and that by love we may be transformed into something of His likeness. As Bruno himself says:—"This is the religion, above controversy or dispute, which I observe from the belief of my own mind, and from the custom of my fatherland and my race." ”

“ Two sons are well known in medicine to-day, and two more have achieved reputation as singers,—a circumstance which the father embodied in the bon mot that "two of his sons howled and two of them healed." He transplanted into Vienna the tendency of the earliest pathologico-anatomical school, which captivated all by its novelty and interest, and in the post-mortem room and the clinical-lecture room he converted medicine in Germany to the realism of the nineteenth century. He was, indeed, the Van Swieten of his time in his influence upon educational affairs. ”

“ But I submit to you, that brave as is such a deed and worthy of all possible honor, it has been hundreds of times for one exceeded in the actual devotion to duty and the resolution required to brave the elements, or to face death elsewhere than on the battlefield, or to surrender strength or mayhap life itself, or to invite disaster by infection, or to wear out and work out life in the constant grinding altruistic work of doing for others, who perhaps have violated every known sanitary law and forfeited their every right to live. ”

“ The eclectic of our day, however, is only an empiric in disguise,—that is, a man whose opinions are based on comparison of observed facts, but whose theoretical ideas do not go beyond phenomena.
In older days philosophy embraced the whole of human knowledge, and the philosopher was not permitted to be unacquainted with any of its branches. Now physics, metaphysics, natural history, etc., are arranged into separate sciences, and the sum-total of knowledge is too great to be compassed by any one man. ”

“ THE RELATION OF THE GRECIAN MYSTERIES TO THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY Ever since mentality has been an attribute of mankind, man has appreciated that he is surrounded by a vast incomprehensible mystery which ever closes in upon him, and from whose environment he may never free himself. The endeavor to solve this mystery has on one hand stimulated his reasoning power, and on the other nearly paralyzed it. Having no better guidance he has in all time attributed to a Great First Cause powers and faculties, even shape and form, more or less human ”

“ It is Greece which furnishes us with the most interesting and the most significant remains of the history of medicine during antiquity, as she furnishes every other art with the same historical advantages. ”

“ From the days when the first duty of the so-called army surgeon was to minister to his commanding general, and when the private soldier received but the scantiest if any attention, we have arrived at that time when the good health of the entire army is the aim and pride of the medical corps, and when public opinion demands for every enlisted man a degree of watchful care greater than many parents bestow upon their own families. ”