A History of Thoracic Surgery

Abstract

At the present time there is an urgent need for medical scholars and medical historians. In this field, Dr. Richard Meade has crowned a distinguished career in thoracic surgery with this equally distinguished and thoroughly scholarly work on the history of the specialty to which he has devoted his life. It is a prototype of what should and must be done for every branch of medicine. There is no longer any danger that knowledge of or reverence for the past will stay progress as it did in Hellenistic Alexandria and Medieval Europe. The philosophy of science and the nature of truth are now too well understood. Scholarship and history, therefore, are purely valuable. As science moves farther from its sources and becomes increasingly complex, and as its literature grows more and more voluminous, the need for medical scholars has become urgent. The value of works of this kind is more