The Advance of Medicine

Abstract

THE Romanes Lecture entitled “The Advance of Medicine” delivered at Oxford on June 1 by Lord Moynihan, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, who received the honorary degree of D.C.L. on that occasion, has been published by the Clarendon Press (2s. 6d. net). After an historical introduction in which he briefly reviews the work of Hippocrates, Galen, Vesalius, the Italian anatomists, Harvey, Mor-gagni, and John Hunter, Lord Moynihan passes on to Lister, whom he describes as the greatest material benefactor of mankind the world has ever known. He attributes Lister's genius to the fact that he was master both of the Hippocratic method of induction and the Galenic method of deduction, and combined the qualities of a physiologist and clinician. Lord Moynihan deplores the fact that physiology is now losing the close relationship it formerly had with clinical medicine, and urges that physiologists and surgeons should make a common attack upon “the innumerable mysteries of disease”. On the other hand, he maintains that though the aid given by physics, chemistry, and physiology is indispensable, these sciences are merely ancillary to medicine, which is a science as well as an art in itself. In view of the fact that laboratory aid, though sometimes decisive or at least helpful, is not seldom negligible, the clinician must maintain his sovereignty. In conclusion, Lord Moynihan exemplifies the humanism of medicine by the work of Harvey, John Hunter, Hillman, who discovered anaesthesia, and Lister. Three appendices to the lecture deal respectively with the ideal training of the surgeon, experiments on animals, and the relation of physics and chemistry to medicine.