Western medicine

“ If the question be approached with an open mind, without bias or prejudice, it will no doubt be found that the West, far more advanced though it be, may yet have something new to learn from the East. Those who have the advantage of being acquainted with both the systems are of opinion that, divested of all the exaggerations in which the Indians are prone to indulge, and of their tendency to consecrate all their sciences, and apotheosise their great men, the Hindoo system of medicine can, on the whole, bear comparison with the Western. ”

“ One must belong to the caste, or be able to trace his descent from it, as a necessary qualification to practice medicine.
This is the earliest form of a medical society, and though it may not possess many progressive elements, it has elements of strength.
What few investigations it did make, it kept. Its peculiar organization and position fitted it for being a good conservator; and when the star of empire took its western course, the tide of medical knowledge stored up and held sacred and secret in Asia, Egypt and Greece, flowed out and was diffused over five continents. ”

“ The demoniacal diseases of the Hindoos are but other words for hysteria, epilepsy, dancing mania, and other disorders of the nervous system. It is also asserted by those who have had opportunities of learning and practising medicine, both on the Eastern and the Western principles, that Indian medical science has reached its highest standard of excellence in Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Hygiene, while the Western science is far more accurate and far superior in Chemistry, Anatomy, Physiology, and Surgery. The Indian science may well be proud of its symptomatology, diagnosis, and prognosis ”

“ It does not really concern us much—as Oriental views of disease and its cure have had very little influence on the evolution of scientific medicine—except in illustration of the persistence of an attitude towards disease always widely prevalent, and, indeed, increasing. ”

“ In Asia Minor, where Greek influence persisted as it did not in Italy, we have a series of distinguished contributors to medicine, or rather, medical literature—that is, men whose books represent a valuable compilation and digestion of the important medical writings from before their time, often [Pg 4] enriched by their own experience. ”

“ In our researches to discover and fix the period when remedies were 7first applied for the alleviation of bodily suffering, we are soon lost in conjecture, or involved in fable; we are unable to reach the period in any country, when the inhabitants were destitute of medical resources, and we find among the most uncultivated tribes, that medicine is cherished as a blessing and practised as an art, as by the inhabitants of New Holland and New Zealand, by those of Lapland and Greenland, of North America, and of the interior of Africa. ”

“ One nation rises to supreme power in the world, while another declines, and, in a brief space of time, the sovereign people change, transmitting, like racers, the lamp of life to some other that is to succeed them.
"There is one Science of Medicine which is concerned with the inspection of health equally in all times, present, past and future." ”

“ I have to announce a discovery to-morrow to the College of Medicine, for I am studying a disease that had disappeared—a mortal disease for which no cure is known in temperate climates, though it is curable in the West Indies—a malady known here in the Middle Ages. A noble fight is that of the physician against such a disease. ”

“ In the Hippocratic writings is summed up the experience of Greece to the Golden Age of Pericles. Out of philosophy, out of abstract speculation, had come a way of looking at nature for which the physicians were mainly responsible, and which has changed forever men's views on disease. Medicine broke its leading strings to religion and philosophy—a tottering, though lusty, child whose fortunes we are to follow in these lectures. ”

“ The following proverb, although it originated in India, is well worthy of acceptance in every part of the world: “When you are ill the physician will be to you a father; when you have recovered from your illness you will find him a friend; and when your health is fully re-established he will act as your protector.”
On a previous page the statement has been made that the science and art of medicine developed in ancient Greece quite independently of any influence that might have been exerted by the teachings of the physicians of India. ”

“ This universal and acknowledged rule is Pathology, the science which unfolds and exhibits the nature and character of disease, and "dictates the maxims of rational practice." It is the foundation and only base of rational medicine, which proceeds on the assumption that the nature and character of disease is fully known and appreciated. This knowledge is not only rational, but indispensable, in order to understand and apply the principles which ought to govern in the medication and cure of disease. ”

“ I have no doubt, that some diseases not yet understood may in time be transferred to the table of those known. But, were I a physician, I would rather leave the transfer to the slow hand of accident, than hasten it by guilty experiments on those who put their lives into my hands. The only sure foundations of medicine are, an intimate knowledge of the human body, and observation on the effects of medicinal substances on that. ”

“ The part played by Germany in these gains in anatomy and physiology, during the period now under consideration, was chiefly that of a sympathetic recipient; for the political conditions at that time were entirely unfavorable to any active participation on the part of the physicians of that country. Early in the eighteenth century, however, they began in earnest to do their share of work in advancing the science of medicine. ”

“ This period is indeed the golden age of medical progress and one to which the historian or philosopher must give his best attention if he is to interpret, properly, the impulses which actuate medical research at the present time. That the earlier history of medicine is overshadowed by the rapid progress of modern discovery as represented in bacteriology is in the nature of things. But it should not, for that reason, be forgotten that the art of medicine existed before this period and with it much science. ”

“ The physician is, alas! too often powerless to contend against the ills that are raging around us. But, really, we can not expect physiology to cure incurable diseases and make men immortal; its mission is to discover the truth, and it is for the physician to apply the lessons of the new truth to the treatment of diseases. Who can say seriously that modern medicine, enlightened by the great physiological discoveries of this and former centuries, is not superior to the medicine of the middle ages? The circulation of the blood was discovered by vivisection. ”

“ With all this, it is not surprising to find a growth in the knowledge of practical medicine; but Egyptian civilization illustrates how crude and primitive may remain a knowledge of disease when conditioned by erroneous views of its nature. At first, the priest and physician were identified, and medicine never became fully dissociated from religion. ”

“ Then, when favorable conditions had developed again, Christian schools and scholars gave it the opportunity to burn brightly for several centuries at the end of the Middle Ages. This medieval age is probably the most difficult period of medical history to understand properly, but it is worth while taking the trouble to follow out the thread of medical tradition from the Greeks to the Renaissance medical writers, who practically begin modern medicine for us. ”

“ Amongst other symptoms of advancing civilisation proper to this period, was an effort towards the correction of unauthorised medical practice. ‘Persons without knowledge of the science of medicine’ were everywhere practising, ‘to the great and evident hazard of the lives and healths of many of our subjects;’ so declared the king. ”

“ There was much to hamper the cultivation of science in the disturbances of the time, the gradual breaking up of the Roman Empire, and the replacement of the peoples of southern Europe by the northern nations, who had come in, yet in spite of all this, medical tradition was well preserved. The most prominent of the conservators were themselves men whose opinions on problems of practical medicine were often of value, and whose powers of observation frequently cannot but be admired. ”

“ But we are not obliged to trust merely to the fable legends of Hindoo Mythology for the assertion that medicine in this country is an old and honored science. When the Greeks came to India with Alexander, they found, amongst the traces of civiliza- tion which raised their astonishment and admiration, the practice of medicine far advanced. ”

“ The physicians, many of whom received their training in the best schools of Europe and the United States, are contributing to-day their full share toward advancing the science of medicine. That China is following in the footsteps of Japan is already plainly evident, and no intelligent observer entertains the slightest doubt of her ultimately—probably at no distant day—possessing a corps of medical men as well educated, as efficient in the treatment of disease, and as practical in public hygiene as their European and American confrères. ”

“ The practice of physic hath been more improved by the casual experiments of illiterate nations, and the rash ones of vagabond quacks, than by all the once celebrated professors of it, and the theoretic teachers in the several schools of Europe, very few of whom have furnished us with one new medicine, or have taught us better to use our old ones, or have in any one instance at all, improved the art of curing disease. ”

“ If in this brief article, which does not purport to be more than a sketch of the tremendous strides made by medicine in the Nineteenth Century, so much space has been given to the germ theory of disease, it is because the demonstration of the truth of that theory has been absolute, and has constituted the very marrow of almost all the medical progress of the century that has been the outcome of continuous thought and study as opposed to chance discovery. ”

“ Arriving now at the surgery of this Age, we find that matters were more chaotic than in other departments of medicine, and for reasons which are easily given and appreciated. While, ordinarily, external diseases are more easily discerned than internal, and while in a corresponding degree they can be more satisfactorily treated; while, in other words, external pathology has ordinarily taken precedence of internal in professional as in lay minds, this view seems to have been inverted for a time during the Middle Ages. ”

“ In Great Britain the cultivation of the science of medicine began at a much later date than it did on the continent of Europe, and, so far as may be judged from the facts within our reach, there were, in the early part of the sixteenth century, very few Englishmen who could justly lay claim to the possession of more than the rudiments of the art of surgery. Two centuries earlier, as I have already stated in a previous chapter, there were three men in England who gained considerable fame in this department of medicine. ”

“ The fourth lecture will be a survey of present-day methods and problems, and the fifth lecture will be a discussion of the position of medical research in America, its facilities, needs and opportunities, with special reference to medical research as a function of the university.
Of medicine in the earliest stages of its development we have no knowledge. Not until we arrive at a period of civilization as highly developed as that of the Assyrians and Egyptians do we find references to the practise—the studied practise—of medicine as a healing art. ”

“ During this century a larger proportion of educated medical men came from abroad and settled in various parts of the country, while the Colonial and the Revolutionary Wars offered ample opportunity for the development and study of military medicine and surgery. Commerce between the two continents increased; communication became more free, and the people of the Old World and the New were constantly brought into closer relation. The most lively medical controversy of the century was, probably, that excited over the introduction of vaccination against small-pox. ”

“ We alluded in the last Sketch to a work in eight small volumes called "New Collection of Tried Prescriptions," a book which answers to our "Domestic Medicine," and professes to supply well-authenticated remedies for some of the most common ills that flesh is heir to. This book gives a fair idea of the principles and practice of medical science in China. ”

“ During the earlier part of this later period, as appears from the writings of Hippocrates, Dioscorides and Galen, various drugs and methods of treatment employed by the physicians of India were adopted by the practitioners of Greece.
Medicine of the Chinese and Japanese.—The isolation of China with respect to those countries which were within comparatively easy reach and in which there was a civilization that, already several thousand years before the Christian era, had attained a remarkable degree of development (India, Babylonia and Egypt, for example) ; her blind belief in authority ”

“ The European renegades in the service are very little better, with a few exceptions. The monks that practise medicine as a profession have a very fair knowledge of simples, and compound their own medicines, and employ a good many recent chemicals and modern ingredients in the European Materia Medica; but their knowledge of acute disease is necessarily limited.”
The natives, in the hour of sickness, have first of all recourse to simple herbal remedies, which have been handed down through many generations, and are chiefly held in estimation by the old people of the villages. ”