If I am jealous of the tendency to expand the time given to the
acquisition of curious knowledge, at the expense of the plain
old-fashioned bedside teachings, I only share the feeling which Sydenham
expressed two hundred years ago, using an image I have already borrowed.
"He would be no honest and successful pilot who was to apply himself with
less industry to avoid rocks and sands and bring his vessel safely home,
than to search into the causes of the ebbing and flowing of the sea,
which, though very well for a philosopher, is foreign to him whose
business it is to secure the ship. So neither will a physician, whose
province it is to cure diseases, be able to do so, though he be a person
of great genius, who bestows less time on the hidden and intricate method
of nature, and adapting his means thereto, than on curious and subtle
speculation."
"Medicine is my wife and Science is my mistress," said Dr. Rush. I do
not think that the breach of the seventh commandment can be shown to have
been of advantage to the legitimate owner of his affections. Read what
Dr. Elisha Bartlett says of him as a practitioner, or ask one of our own
honored ex-professors, who studied under him, whether Dr. Rush had ever
learned the meaning of that saying of Lord Bacon, that man is the
minister and interpreter of Nature, or whether he did not speak
habitually of Nature as an intruder in the sick room, from which his art
was to expel her as an incompetent and a meddler.
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