A.J. Youngson - The Scientific Revolution in Victorian Medicine

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
HISTORY OF MEDICINE

Volume 14

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION IN VICTORIAN MEDICINE

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION IN VICTORIAN MEDICINE

A.J. YOUNGSON

First published in 1979 by Croom Helm Ltd

This edition first published in 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1979 A.J. Youngson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-367-08576-6 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02312-5 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-03060-5 (Volume 14) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02015-5 (Volume 14) (ebk)

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

The Scientific Revolution in Victorian Medicine

A. J. YOUNGSON

1979 A. J. Youngson

Croom Helm Ltd, 210 St Johns Road, London SW11

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Youngson, Alexander John

The scientific revolution in Victorian medicine
1. Medical innovations Great Britain History 19th century
I. Title

610.941R487

ISBN 0-85664-972-4

Printed in Great Britain by
Billing & Sons Limited
Guildford, London and Worcester

CONTENTS

In memoriam Alexander Brown, MB ChB

This book is a study of the resistance to new ideas. Such resistance is encountered not only in medicine, but probably in every field of human thought and endeavour. Because new ideas are the fuel of progress, we are apt to assume that those who resist new ideas are dull or obscurantist, or that they have a vested interest in the status quo ; and such may often be the case. We are also apt to assume that those who resisted new ideas which time has proved to be valuable must have been seriously mistaken. But this need not be so. For us, accustomed to innumerable ideas and devices which once were new, there is no shock in them of novelty; their success is plain to see; such deficiencies as they originally contained have long been made good. But that is not how it was at the time, and therefore the opposition to new ideas may not be unreasonable, even to ideas which triumph in the end. To dismiss such opposition as stupid or absurd is to fail to understand how ideas conflict and develop, and how progress really takes place.

My work would have been impossible without the help of several institutions and of many more persons. The Australian National University, which enabled me to visit the United Kingdom in 1978 in order to gather material not available in Australia; the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, who most kindly allowed me access to their libraries and whose libraries gave me courteous, valuable and expert assistance; and the University of Edinburgh, the library of which was also most generously made available to me. Of those who gave encouragement and advice, I am especially indebted to Professor A.S. Duncan, Professor W. Hayes, and Dr G.I.M. Ross, each of whom read a part of the typescript. They may not wish to be associated with the final result, and are certainly in no way responsible for the errors and omissions which the following pages may contain.

Finally, I wish to express my thanks, yet again, to my wife, whose skill in indexing and proof-reading very far exceeds my own.

Canberra December 1978

Knowledge is power; more specifically, scientific knowledge is power. This idea, put forward with magniloquent authority by Francis Bacon early in the seventeenth century and reiterated and elaborated by many subsequent writers, is the foundation of the modern world.

The connection and we need not doubt that a connection exists between science and power and technology, and between technology and higher living standards, and between higher living standards and progress that really is progress, is long and intricate and difficult to determine. But years ago the path that connects science with progress seemed, to those who had scarcely begun to travel along it, a broad highway, and the conviction spread that science not only leads to progress, but virtually guarantees it. Largely as a result of this opinion, those who then studied mans history and who speculated about his future were, on the whole, more hopeful than anyone had been before, and than anyone has been since. It was felt no longer necessary to imagine paradise as existing only in the hereafter, or in the form of an antique golden age or a state of nature long past. The new faith was that paradise lay in the future. In the future, wrote Joseph Priestley in 1768.

all knowledge will be subdivided and extended; and knowledge, as Lord Bacon observes, being power, the human powers will, in fact, be increased; nature, including both its materials, and its laws, will be more at our command; men will make their situation in this world abundantly more easy and comfortable; they will probably prolong their existence in it, and will grow daily more happy, each in himself, and more able (and, I believe, more disposed) to communicate happiness to others.

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