James J. Walsh

“ But how can one tongue adequately praise a man who presided over the whole domain of the science of natural life; or how can one tongue depict the master mind, which extended the limits of his great kingdom until it became too large for his own undivided government? Is it possible in a few short minutes to sketch the history of a conqueror who, in restless campaigns, through more than one generation, only made use of each new victory as a standpoint whereon he might set his feet and boldly look out for fresh triumphs? ”

“ The essence of significant work in medicine consists of observation, not theory. It has always been the custom to theorize much and unfortunately to observe but little. Long ago John Ruskin said that the hardest thing in the world for a man to do is to see something and to tell it simply as he saw it. Certainly this has been true in medicine. The men who have had eyes, and have used them, have impressed their names upon the history of progressive scientific advance. The theorists have never contributed anything worth while to the body of medical truth. ”

“ The modern doctor, moreover, was quite as patient in his work of research as Laennec, and though his discovery had not so wide an application as the latter's it was accomplished through the same tireless, persevering labor, and through the same instinct of genius that finally led to the culminating invention which no one has been able to improve, and which has made its inventor's name a familiar word to medical men over the world. ”

“ So true is this, that if what seems to be a new truth in medicine is accepted at once, and willingly, there is more than a suspicion that it is not really a new discovery but only a modification of something hitherto well known.
All the great discoverers in medicine have practically without exception met, if not with opposition, surely with neglect of their work. We smile complacently now at the generation that considered the stethoscope a toy, and asked derisively if they should be expected to carry it about with them. ”

“ This discovery has rendered the scientific medicine of the world our tributary for all time. It was an immortal creation, and its effects will never fail to be felt. More than this, it will never be merely an historical reminiscence, because of the fact that it guided men aright, but it will in its actuality remain as an aid and diagnostic auxiliary. Auscultation will not disappear but with medical science itself, and with this stage of our civilization which guides, directs and enlightens it. ”

“ When the celebration of his fortieth anniversary came around, the hearty tributes from all over Europe showed in what lofty reverence the kindly old man was held, who had sacrificed some of his chances for greater scientific fame in order to be a teacher of others, and a living exponent of the fact that the frame of mind which leads to great scientific discovery and that which bows humbly to religious truth, far from being hopelessly and essentially opposed to each other, may be peacefully united in the same person in their highest expression. ”

“ When that genius, the physician Robert Mayer, discovered the conservation of energy as the result of his acute observation, that blood drawn by venesection in the tropics was redder than that drawn in colder climates, he found that scientific circles were not only not ready to accept his demonstration, but that he was looked upon as a visionary, somewhat as one who thought that he had solved the problem of squaring the circle or the endless puzzle of perpetual motion. ”

“ It is nearly always the sign of only passing merit when any work secures the plaudits of its own generation. Brilliant theories are often immediately hailed with universal acclaim, while ground-breaking observations that are really great discoveries are apt to be neglected. The really new discovery is so novel that men cannot appreciate it at once. It is so different from their ordinary modes of thinking that they cannot place it properly. Its complete significance fails them. ”

“ A new era in medicine has been marked by a new science, depending on the immutable laws of physical phenomena, and, like the discoveries founded on such a basis, simple in its application and easily understood--a gift of science to a favored son; one by which the ear is converted into the eye, the hidden recesses of visceral disease open to view; a new guide to the treatment, and a new help to the ready detection, prevention and cure of the most widely spread diseases which affect mankind. ”

“ With an inventive genius of a high order, that gave him a prominent place in a great generation and that has stamped his name on the roll of medical fame for all time, there were united the simple faith, the earnest purpose, the clear-sighted judgment and the feeling kindness--those supreme qualities of head and heart that will always secure for him a prominent place in the small group of great medical men. ”

“ There is not a day that I do not in my practice employ some of the modes of treatment which Graves excels in describing with the minuteness of the true practitioner, and not a day that I do not, from the bottom of my heart, thank the Dublin physician for the information he has given me.
"Graves is, in my acceptation of the term, a perfect clinical teacher. An attentive observer, a profound philosopher, an ingenious artist, an able therapeutist, he commends to our admiration the art whose domain he enlarges, and the practice which he renders more useful and more fertile." ”

“ For in him they recognize a master mind such as is given to a branch of science not more than once in a century; the veritable possessor of a magician's wand, who knows how to disclose the hidden veins of precious ore, the exploitation of which will prove a source of riches to so many faithful followers. For these the dark little laboratory of the college in which Bernard made so many of his ground-breaking discoveries will be in the nature of a shrine to which one comes with grateful memories of the genius loci that was. ”

“ It helps a man immensely to be a bit of a hero worshipper, and the stories of the lives of the masters of medicine do much to stimulate our ambition and rouse our sympathies. If the life and work of such men as Bichat and Laennec will not stir the blood of a young man and make him feel proud of France and of Frenchmen, he must be a dull and muddy-mettled rascal. In reading the life of Hunter, of Jenner, who thinks of the nationality which is merged and lost in our interest in the man and in his work! ”

“ After the false impression that it is to older men we owe progress in medicine, perhaps the most universally accepted apparent truth is that the investigating spirit is communicable, and that the pupils of a great master may be expected to carry on his work and add almost as much as he has done to the great body of medical knowledge during the generation immediately following his work. ”

“ The man who had done most to make clear these mysterious processes of nature was, however, himself far from thinking that materialism offers any adequate explanation of the mysteries of life, or of the relations of man to man, and of man to his Creator. Impatient at the pretensions of such pseudoscientists, Pasteur once said: "Posterity will one day laugh at the sublime foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. ”

“ Without exaggeration we can call the glory which has come to French medicine because of the great discovery of auscultation a national honor. It must be conceded that for a long time before Laennec, the great man of medicine, those to whom medical science owed its ground-breaking work did not belong to France. Harvey, Haller and Morgagni had made the investigations on which are founded the circulation of the blood, experimental physiology, and pathological anatomy, in other lands than ours. ”

“ THEODORE SCHWANN, FATHER OF THE CELL DOCTRINE.
It is one of the curious features of history that genuine worth of human accomplishment is almost in inverse ratio to the popularity it obtains in the generation in which it is produced. Supremely great work is rarely appreciated at anything like its proper value, by contemporaries. This principle is true apparently in all fields of human endeavor. In literature and in art it is a commonplace. But also, surprising though it may be, in science and in social betterment the rule holds a prominent place. ”

“ My feeble powers have been invoked to honor this great man whom we all, representatives of the great medical family, teachers and taught, practitioners and investigators, mutually lament and whose memory is still so vividly with us. Neither cares by day nor labors by night can efface from our mind the sorrow which we feel for his loss. If the will made the deed, how gladly would I attempt the hopeless task of proper appreciation. Few have been privileged, like myself, to have this great master beside them in every stage of development. ”

“ As a proof of the striking difference between the value of observation and theory in medicine, it may be said that many hundreds of volumes containing the most elaborate medical theories were published during the eighteenth century, and that practically none of these is ever read now, except for curiosity's sake by some seeker after the quaint and distant in medicine, while Morgagni's books still contain a precious fund of information, to which pathologists at least, and not a few clinicians, turn often with interest and come away always with profit. ”

“ The number of things that the young man has to learn and that are taught him, often with the assurance that they are almost gospel truth in medicine, and yet that he finds before he has been long out of school or indeed sometimes before he leaves school, to be at best opinions, is entirely too great. The saving grace for the correction of this constantly recurring fault in education is undoubtedly a knowledge of the development of medicine in the past and a recognition of the fact that the accepted truth of any one generation proves after all often enough to be only apparent. ”

“ Higher motives dominate the life and actions of Pasteur himself. In the midst of his panegyric of the great positivist the greatest scientist of his age makes his confession of faith in the things that are above and beyond the domain of the senses--his ideals and his God.
There is said to exist a constant, unappeasable warfare between science and religion. Perhaps it does exist, but surely only in the narrow minds of the lesser lights. In no century has science developed as in the one that has just closed. ”

“ What a sad reflection it is on our restless eagerness in this life, and on the vanity of our hopes, that a genius like this must perish just when it was about to receive the fruit of its labors! He leaves to us a name, a name difficult to sustain and the example of virtues that it will not be easy to imitate. ”

“ American medicine has no more shining light than the name of Joseph O'Dwyer, and the record of his simple, sincere, straightforward life, faithful during his successful career to the simple religious principles imbibed in the bosom of an old-fashioned Catholic family, who, during a long career, thought little of self and mainly of the possibilities for good presented by his profession, cannot but prove one of the standard biographies in this country's medical history. ”

“ Louis Pasteur is the most striking figure in nineteenth century science. In biology, in chemistry, in physics, in medicine and surgery, and in the important practical subjects of fermentation, spontaneous generation and sanitation, he has left landmarks that represent great advances in science and starting-points for new explorations into the as yet unmapped domain of scientific knowledge. ”

“ One of the great mysteries of medicine, the varying virulence of disease, had been thus solved by what seemed an accident. There are no accidents in the lives of great investigators. There are surprises, but genius knows how to reconcile their occurrence with the principles they are working out. Pasteur understood at once the wonderful utility there might be in this discovery for the protection of men and animals from disease. ”

“ I foresee very well that I shall encounter no little opposition to my views and I put my invention before the public with that anticipation. I realize, however, that envy and blame and even hatred and calumny have never failed to come to men who have illuminated art or science by discoveries or have added to their perfection. I expect to have to submit to this danger myself, but I think that no one will be able to call any of my observations to account. ”

“ It takes genius to cross the line into the realm of the hitherto unknown, and the contemporary generation usually occupies itself mainly with making little of the new discovery. Even genius very rarely makes more than one original observation in a lifetime, and it would be too much to expect more from Auenbrugger. ”

“ I have received the copy of the evidence at large respecting the discovery of the vaccine inoculation, which you have been pleased to send me, and for which I return you my thanks. Having been among the early converts in this part of the globe to its efficacy, I took an early part in recommending it to my countrymen. I avail myself of this occasion to render you my portion of the tribute of gratitude due to you from the whole human family. Medicine has never before produced any single improvement of such utility. ”

“ To Laennec will forever belong the honor of having fixed definitely the clinical picture of the disease, and of having separated it by means of auscultation and his pathological studies from all similar affections of the lungs. Villemin showed that it was an infectious disease, absolutely specific in character, and capable of transmission by inoculation from man to the animal. To Koch the world owes the knowledge of the exact cause of the disease and consequently of the practical method for preventing its spread. ”

“ It has been the custom to praise Corvisart for his justice toward Auenbrugger. Mere justice seems scarcely a worthy reason for praise of a great man, yet the history of medicine is so full of failures on the part of subsequent observers to acknowledge priority of discovery, that perhaps the praise does not seem quite as futile as it otherwise would.
It is not surprising then that Corvisart's pupil Laennec should have appreciated very thoroughly the value of Auenbrugger's discovery. ”