Abstract
THE International Medical Congress which has met in London during the past week is the largest that the world has ever seen. Medical men have assembled from every part of the earth, and their meetings seem to have been productive of general satisfaction. The objects of such a Congress are twofold—first, to tell or hear of new discoveries; and, second, to make men personally acquainted who have previously been known to each other only through their works. The latter is perhaps the more important of the two, for it is not only a source of very great pleasure, but of great profit, inasmuch as it enables men to form a juster appreciation of the workers in each department of medicine, and to avoid falling into the error, very common at the present day, of placing the observations and opinions of a mere tyro on a level with those of the scientific veteran. The work of the Congress has been divided into no less than fifteen sections, each of which has taken up some special department of the science or practice of medicine. For medicine is now not merely an art. It is no longer practised by simple rule-of-thumb. It is becoming, to some extent, a science, and exact knowledge is beginning to supplant blind empiricism. The means by which this change has been effected have been admirably illustrated in the addresses of Prof. Virchow, Mr. Simon, and Prof. Fraser.
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Vivisection and Medicine . Nature 24, 329–332 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/024329a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/024329a0