Abstract
WITHIN the period of fifty years during which NATURE has been published, medicine has undergone a revolution. It has become enlarged from an art of observation and empiricism to an applied science founded upon research; from a craft of tradition and sagacity to an applied science of analysis and law; from a descriptive code of surface phenomena to the discovery of deeper affinities; from a set of rules and axioms of quality to measurements of quantity. When I turn back to the medical text-books of my pupilage, to the wise and scholarly Watson or the respectable Alison, and contrast them with the text-books of to-day, I marvel that a change so vast, so profound, so revolutionary, should have come about in one lifetime ! Many a generation had to pass before Harvey's researches established animal mechanics; many again before the half-lights on animal heat of Willis, Mayow, and Boyle were brought to quantitative verifications.
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ALLBUTT, T. The New Birth of MedicineE. Nature 104, 204–206 (1919). https://doi.org/10.1038/104204a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/104204a0