The Evolution of Modern Medicine [87]
reactions; both constructive and destructive processes go on; new protoplasm takes the place of old. We can analyze the income of the body and we can analyze its output, and from these data we can learn much concerning the body's chemistry. A great improvement in the method of such work has recently been secured by the device of inclosing the person who is the subject of the experiment in a respiration calorimeter. This is an air-tight chamber, artificially supplied with a constant stream of pure air, and from which the expired air, laden with the products of respiration, is withdrawn for purposes of analysis. The subject may remain in the chamber for days, the composition of all food and all excrete being determined, and all heat that is given off being measured. Favorable conditions are thus established for an exact study of many problems of nutrition. The difficulties increase when we attempt to trace the successive steps in the corporeal pathway of molecule and atom. Yet these secrets of the vital process are also gradually being revealed. When we remember that it is in this very field of nutrition that there exist great popular ignorance and a special proneness to fad and prejudice, we realize how practically helpful are such exact studies of metabolism."[13]
[13] Frederick S. Lee, Ph.D.: Scientific Features of Modern Medicine, New York, 1911. I would like to call attention to this work of Professor Lee's as presenting all the scientific features of modern medicine in a way admirably adapted for anyone, lay or medical, who wishes to get a clear sketch of them.
CHAPTER VI
THE RISE OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE
THE story so far has been of men and of movements--of men who have, consciously or unconsciously, initiated great movements, and of movements by which, nolens volens, the men of the time were moulded and controlled. Hippocrates, in the tractate on "Ancient Medicine," has a splendid paragraph on the attitude of mind towards the men of the past. My attention was called to it one day in the Roman Forum by Commendatore Boni, who quoted it as one of the great sayings of antiquity. Here it is: "But on that account, I say, we ought not to reject the ancient Art, as if it were not, and had not been properly founded, because it did not attain accuracy in all things, but rather, since it is capable of reaching to the greatest exactitude by reasoning, to receive it and admire its discoveries, made from a state of great ignorance, and as having been well and properly made, and not from chance."[1]
[1] The Works of Hippocrates, Adams, Vol. I, p. 168, London, 1849 (Sydenham Society).
I have tried to tell you what the best of these men in successive ages knew, to show you their point of outlook on the things that interest us. To understand the old writers one must see as they saw, feel as they felt, believe as they believed--and this is hard, indeed impossible! We may get near them by asking the Spirit of the Age in which they lived to enter in and dwell with us, but it does not always come. Literary criticism is not literary history--we have no use here for the former, but to analyze his writings is to get as far as we can behind the doors of a man's mind, to know and appraise his knowledge, not from our standpoint, but from that of his contemporaries, his predecessors and his immediate successors. Each generation has its own problems to face, looks at truth from a special focus and does not see quite the same outlines as any other. For example, men of the present generation grow up under influences very different from those which surrounded my generation in the seventies of the last century, when Virchow and his great contemporaries laid the sure and deep foundations of modern pathology. Which of you now knows the "Cellular Pathology" as we did? To many of you it is a closed book,--to many more Virchow may be thought a spent force. But no, he has only taken his place in a great galaxy. We do not forget the magnitude of his labors, but a new generation has new problems--his message was not for you--but
[13] Frederick S. Lee, Ph.D.: Scientific Features of Modern Medicine, New York, 1911. I would like to call attention to this work of Professor Lee's as presenting all the scientific features of modern medicine in a way admirably adapted for anyone, lay or medical, who wishes to get a clear sketch of them.
CHAPTER VI
THE RISE OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE
THE story so far has been of men and of movements--of men who have, consciously or unconsciously, initiated great movements, and of movements by which, nolens volens, the men of the time were moulded and controlled. Hippocrates, in the tractate on "Ancient Medicine," has a splendid paragraph on the attitude of mind towards the men of the past. My attention was called to it one day in the Roman Forum by Commendatore Boni, who quoted it as one of the great sayings of antiquity. Here it is: "But on that account, I say, we ought not to reject the ancient Art, as if it were not, and had not been properly founded, because it did not attain accuracy in all things, but rather, since it is capable of reaching to the greatest exactitude by reasoning, to receive it and admire its discoveries, made from a state of great ignorance, and as having been well and properly made, and not from chance."[1]
[1] The Works of Hippocrates, Adams, Vol. I, p. 168, London, 1849 (Sydenham Society).
I have tried to tell you what the best of these men in successive ages knew, to show you their point of outlook on the things that interest us. To understand the old writers one must see as they saw, feel as they felt, believe as they believed--and this is hard, indeed impossible! We may get near them by asking the Spirit of the Age in which they lived to enter in and dwell with us, but it does not always come. Literary criticism is not literary history--we have no use here for the former, but to analyze his writings is to get as far as we can behind the doors of a man's mind, to know and appraise his knowledge, not from our standpoint, but from that of his contemporaries, his predecessors and his immediate successors. Each generation has its own problems to face, looks at truth from a special focus and does not see quite the same outlines as any other. For example, men of the present generation grow up under influences very different from those which surrounded my generation in the seventies of the last century, when Virchow and his great contemporaries laid the sure and deep foundations of modern pathology. Which of you now knows the "Cellular Pathology" as we did? To many of you it is a closed book,--to many more Virchow may be thought a spent force. But no, he has only taken his place in a great galaxy. We do not forget the magnitude of his labors, but a new generation has new problems--his message was not for you--but