- St. Luke- -Mr. Machin Zechariah Thompson-influenza visitations-Duke of Modena-Dr. Johnson -Hecker-Mount Vesuvius-haze-dry fogs-darkness-Dr. Prout -Berzelius-seleniuretted hydrogen-Humboldt's description of Table III.-SMALL-POX, MEASLES, SCARLATINA, and TYPHUS. Weekly Return and Mean for ten years. Table IV.-DIARRHOEA and CHOLERA EPIDEMICS. Weekly Return for 1849 and 1854. THE STUDY OF ANTIENT MEDICAL LITERATURE. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. THERE are some minds that never will be contented with the mere exercise of the practical part of their profession. Many such love to indulge their mental appetites upon the rarer fruits of literature; and although not regardless of what is essentially necessary, yet they cannot help confessing that they find immense enjoyment in allowing their thoughts to wander back into the realms of classic lore, and cull from the writings of elegant authors, observations and expressions which have received their polish from master minds. The bark or the wood we use certainly may be the only parts of a tree that we require in medicine; yet we should not neglect to study the leaves and the flowers that produce them. The practical dissertations of the day may contain all that is essential to inform the student of the nature and treatment of diseases; but certainly this is no reason why he should neglect to cultivate a more intimate knowledge of the history of medicine. Researches into the works of antient writers may be condemned as unnecessary, because we have all that we desire to know for our daily routine in the compilations of the day; but assuredly to be so contented is to deprive ourselves of a great source of pleasure, and B to avoid a gymnasium whose healthy exercises would invigorate and freshen up our minds. Every man should endeavour as much as possible to use his own judgment in matters with which he is concerned, else is he often obliged to pin his faith upon the dicta of others, of which the more enlarged the mind becomes by study, the more does it become intolerant. It is true that many learned and ingenious men have from their vast research and experience come to certain conclusions, and defined certain laws, which ages will never be able to controvert; but this is no more a reason why we should not tread over the same ground again through which they have journeyed, than that we should be contented with an epitome of the maxims of Holy Writ, without thoroughly searching the Scriptures for ourselves. Maxims and principles are all very well, and must be known; but we may depend that they are more thoroughly engrafted in our minds by numerous illustrations than by any other means:—without illustration, a series of maxims become wearisome; the mere detail of signs and symptoms in disease would become equally so to the student. No one, I think, will be bold enough to deny its utility in religion and science; the Bible abounds in it, and therefore it ought to be read thoroughly; and as in Medicine the works of Hippocrates and other classical authors are scattered over with observations made by men of enlarged mental capacity, so ought they to be consulted by all who would have something more than a mere rote-knowledge of their science. Whether we study law, physic, or divinity, we have rich mines of antient information; and few men who have signalised themselves by the efforts of their brains in either of those professions, have neglected to avail themselves of these sources of mental wealth. With all its charms, and with all the advantages attending its culture, we are inclined to think that the study of the antient literature of medicine is in the present age too much neglected, both in our schools and by the profession at large. Why Medicine should fail, among the majority of its professors, to create a thirst for a knowledge of its history, is certainly remarkable, when we consider how many noble monuments remain, which, were they the supporters of any other science or art, would ensure for themselves multitudes of admirers. We cannot but admire the taste that creates a delight in the reader of the antient Greek tragedies: the scholar, whilst enjoying his intellectual feast, is carried back many hundreds of years,-lives, for the time being, as a spectator of the life-like drama before him; and whilst contemplating the characters of a departed age, reflects upon the striking likeness that obtains between the present and the past; for he finds that mankind has ever been the same,-that love and virtue had the self-same difficulties to contend against as now, that deceit and vice were often the means of worldly prosperity, and that even among the heathen, unenlightened by true religion, there still existed a proper appreciation of right and wrong. Thus linking the hoary past with the ever-budding present, he finds that the chain of human events is still the same wherever it can be traced, and that the history of our ancestry is only an anticipation of our own, if we take it in its grand outline, and analyse the remote causes of events in all ages by a reference to those passions which will ever be found to regulate man's actions. What has been preserved for us of the speeches of the Greek and Roman orators still claims the attention of those who would make eloquence their study. Demosthenes, Cicero, and others not less worthy of earthly immortality, are still models in the scholar's estimation, although they may be disregarded by thousands who think themselves perfect in elocution when addressing a constituency or a box of jurymen. With all our devotion to the literature of Antient Medicine, we must concede that it is not necessary for a man to study either Cicero or Demosthenes to be a good orator, or Hippocrates to be a successful physician; for we well know that there have been hundreds of excellent physicians, legislators, architects, and orators, who were ignorant of all that was written by those who excelled as such in Greece and Italy. At the same time, however, that we make this concession, we must assert that, had these excellent modern professors studied the works of those who were pre-eminent before them, they would have excelled still more, and, moreover, in some instances would have borne their laurels with less arrogance and pride, for they would have seen that their knowledge, however little they might have imagined it to be so, was still borrowed, and their information culled, from sources that they knew not nor thought of. Constituted as Medicine is now, it would be absurd to suppose that a medical man ought to depend solely on the founders of medicine, or that he ought to devote too much time to the study of their works. To peruse them, however, and blend their truths with the advanced state of modern knowledge, will ever prove of immense use in the cultivation of the mind: "quamvis non faciant medicum, aptiorem tamen medicinæ reddunt." |