532.
And, thirdly, to scientific truth alone may the homo mensura principle
be applied, since of all mental treasures of the race it alone compels
general acquiescence. That this general acquiescence, this aspect of
certainty, is not reached per saltum, but is of slow, often of difficult
growth,--marked by failures and frailties, but crowned at last with
an acceptance accorded to no other product of mental activity,--is
illustrated by every important discovery from Copernicus to Darwin.
The difficulty is to get men to the thinking level which compels the
application of scientific truths. Protagoras, that "mighty-wise man,"
as Socrates called him, who was responsible for the aphorism that man
is the measure of all things, would have been the first to recognize the
folly of this standard for the people at large. But we have gradually
reached a stage in which knowledge is translated into action, made
helpful for suffering humanity, just as the great discoveries in physics
and chemistry have been made useful in the advance of civilization.
We have traced medicine through a series of upward steps--a primitive
stage, in which it emerged from magic and religion into an empirical
art, as seen among the Egyptians and Babylonians; a stage in which the
natural character of disease was recognized and the importance of its
study as a phenomenon of nature was announced; a stage in which the
structure and functions of the human body were worked out; a stage in
which the clinical and anatomical features of disease were determined;
a stage in which the causes of disorders were profitably studied, and
a final stage, into which we have just entered, the application of the
knowledge for their prevention.
Pages:
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290