Lectures on syphilis, and on some forms of local disease, affecting principally the organs of generation / by Henry Lee.

  • Lee, Henry, 1817-11 June 1898.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on syphilis, and on some forms of local disease, affecting principally the organs of generation / by Henry Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    solid parts of the body, of being preserved, except in micro- scopic quantities, for continued illustration, yet are they in- stinct with the germs of life, and attracted the especial atten- tion of him whose labors these Lectures are intended to illustrate. The real use of any fact in physiology, or of any anatomical or physiological preparation, is to illustrate some living action, and it was to this end that Hunter labored, both in his dis- sections and writings; and, regarded in this light, every dis- section and every fact has a reference to the whole life of the individual, and illustrates something with regard to that life. If we do not see this connection, we are dealing with dead matter alone, and our studies are barren as regards living beings. This idea was present to the mind of Goethe, when he puts into the mouth of Mephistopheles— Who would describe and stud}- aught alive, Seeks lirst the living spirit thence to drive. Then are the lifeless fragments in his hand ; There only fails, alas ! the spirit-band. This process chemists name, in learned thesis, Mocking themselves, Naturce e7ichei?-esis. Pope had the same idea when he wrote— His principle of action once explore. That instant 'tis his principle no more; Like following life through creatures we dissect, We lose it in the moment we detect. Two different schools have claimed Hunter as their disciple. It has been said by some that his strength lay in his powers of induction, by which he inferred respecting a whole class what he had ascertained respecting some individuals of that class; whilst, by others, it has been assumed that he had a wonderful faculty of deduction, by which, by an intuitive appreciation of certain principles with regard to healthy and diseased actions, he could apply those principles to other actions, and diseases which he had not himself investigated. Thus Babington remarks, with regard to his investigation of the diseases which will hereafter chiefly occupy our attention, that