Makers of Modern Medicine

BY

JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., Ph.D., LL.D.

ACTING DEAN AND PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE AND OF NERVOUS
DISEASES, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOL, AND ADJUNCT PROFESSOR
OF MEDICINE AT THE NEW YORK POLYCLINIC SCHOOL FOR GRADUATES
IN MEDICINE; PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY
AT ST. FRANCIS XAVIER'S COLLEGE
IN NEW YORK.

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK
1907

COPYRIGHT, 1907,

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS,

NEW YORK.

TO

DR. WILLIAM OSLER

WHO EXEMPLIFIES FOR THIS GENERATION THE FINEST QUALITIES OF
THESE MAKERS OF OUR MODERN MEDICINE, THIS VOLUME IS
WITH HIS KIND PERMISSION DEDICATED AS A
SLIGHT TOKEN OF THE ADMIRATION
OF A DISTANT DISCIPLE.

"If in some things I dissent from others, whose wit, industry, diligence and judgment I look up at and admire, let me not therefore hear presently of ingratitude and rashness. For I thank those that have taught me, and will ever; but yet dare not think the scope of their labor and inquiry was to envy their posterity what they also could add and find out. If I err, pardon me. I do not desire to be equal with those that went before; but to have my reasons examined with theirs, and so much faith to be given them, or me, as those shall evict. I am neither author or fautor of any sect. I will have no man addict himself to me; but if I have anything right, defend it as Truth's, not mine, save as it conduceth to a common good. It profits not me to have any man fence or fight for me, to follow or take my part. Stand for truth, and 'tis enough."

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PREFACE.

The present volume is published at the solicitation of many friends who have read the articles contained in it as they appeared at various times in magazines and who deemed that they were worth preservation in a more permanent form. The only possible claim for its filling a want lies in the fact that it presents these workers in medicine not only as scientists but also and especially as men, in relation to their environment, social, religious and educational. I have to thank the editors of the Messenger, Donahoe's Magazine, The Catholic World and the Records of the American Catholic Historical Society, for permission to reprint the articles which appeared in their periodicals.

The opening chapter, The Making of Medicine, is an abstract from the introductory lecture of the course in the history of medicine at the Fordham University Medical School, New York. Much of the material for the article on the Irish School of Medicine was gathered for a lecture before the Historical Club of Johns Hopkins University and the District Medical Society of the District of Columbia. The sketch of the life of Dr. Jenner has not hitherto been published. All of the other articles have been considerably lengthened and revised.

There are other makers of modern medicine who deserve a place beside those mentioned here, but as the material had reached the amount that would make a good-sized volume it {viii} was thought better to proceed with the publication of the first series of sketches, which will be followed by others if conditions conspire to encourage any further additions to our not very copious English medical biography. A subsequent volume will contain sketches of the lives of old-time makers of medicine in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the men who laid the firm foundations of our medical science of the present day.

I have to thank my friend of many years and brother alumnus of Fordham University, Dr. Austin O'Malley, of Philadelphia, for reading the proofs and for suggestions while the book was going through the press.

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CONTENTS.

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THE MAKING OF MEDICINE

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Without History a man's soul is purblind, seeing only the things which almost touch his eyes.
--Fuller, Holy and Profane State, 1641.

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THE MAKING OF MEDICINE.

Our generation, in this no more self-concentrated than many another, has prided itself so much on the progress it has achieved in science that it has in its interest in the insistent present rather neglected the claims of the history of science. There has been the feeling that our contemporaries and immediate predecessors have accomplished so much as to put us far beyond the past and its workers, so that it would seem almost a waste of time to rehearse the crude notions with which they occupied themselves. In no one of the sciences is this truer than in medicine. Yet it seems likely that no more chastening influence on the zeal for the novel in science, which so often has led this generation astray, could possibly be exerted than that which will surely follow from adequate knowledge of scientific history. In medicine there is no doubt at all that an intimate acquaintance with the work of the great medical men of the past would save many a