Abstract
Two important medical classics which were recently published in the Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine have just been reprinted in book form and thereby made accessible to a wide circle of readers. The first of these, entitled “On Thought in Medicine”, is the address delivered by Hermann von Helmholtz on August 2, 1877, on the anniversary of the foundation of the Institute for the Education of Army Surgeons. In this address, Helmholtz attacks the old educational system which he regards as pursuing a false idea of science, in which there is a one-sided and erroneous reverence for the deductive method. Medical education during the early part of the nineteenth century in Germany was based mainly on the study of books. There were no physiological or physical laboratories, and microscopical demonstrations were infrequent in lectures. It fell to Johannes Muller and his pupils, of whom Helmholtz was one, to stimulate the study of microscopical and pathological anatomy, experimental pathology and therapeutics and to substitute experimental research for untried and unconfirmed hypotheses.
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Medical Classics. Nature 142, 245 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142245c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142245c0