Ars medici : an essay on the doctor's art and its relation to science / by John H. Clarke.
- Clarke, John Henry, 1852-1931.
- Date:
- 1884
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Ars medici : an essay on the doctor's art and its relation to science / by John H. Clarke. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.
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![i. The confusion of ideas that prevails throughout the medical profession as to what is science, and what is art, and what are the right relations between the two, could hardly he better illustrated than by placing side by side two sentences extracted from one of the medical journals of last year. In March, 1883, the Medical Times and Gazette said : Marwood appears to have reduced his calling to a science : —and in December of the same year: The fact is hanging is not a science but an art, and is better done by rule of thumb than by theory. Among the many baseless assumptions contained within the narrow limits of this mar- vellous pair of sentences three stand prominently forth. The first is the assumption that it is quite possible to convert an art into a science. Next, it is assumed that a science as well as an art is concerned with action. And, lastly, the distinction between an art and a science is assumed to be that the former is governed in its operation by rule of thumb and the latter by theory. This confusion is not by any means confined to the medical view of the gruesome function of the common hangman—a function which the soaring ambition of the Students' Journal would fain include within the duties of the professor of life-saving—it affects the whole domain of medical thought Hitherto, says the Lancet * [sur- gery] has been too much of an art, too little of a science. w Before therapeutics —the art of Healing, proper,— can become a science/' says Dr. Lauder Brunton,f the physician must know the action of his drugs, just as the locksmith does that of his keys, and since pharmacology is](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21037759_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
