The Study of the History of Medicine.

NZMJ, 1926

By James Young, M.D.

[Continued from 26 June 2026, 139(1637)]

There is yet another practical consideration which may be illustrated by the tale of syphilis. The value of time is emphasised by none more than by your practical utilitarian, and yet, from the earliest days of recognition of this disease it was well known that the process can be started in any accessible part of the human body, still even in this country learned professors use up this valuable element of life, time, theirs and ours, in such memoirs as this (of 1901) “Zwei Fälle von syphilitischen Primär-affecten mit abormen Sitz.” A patient authority tells us that already more than a thousand monographs have been written to show that syphilis may have an extragenital seat of origin. This is killing a dead dog with vengeance.

It is not only in syphilodology that illustrations may be obtained of the loss of time and opportunity which have been due to too great scorn of the past of our science. Even the same Ricord was at pains to invent the vaginal speculum, apparently unaware that this instrument was a property of the old Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.

In 1692 Purmann pointed out that “recognition of certain conditions of the vagina and uterus could not be well accomplished without the ‘Mutter Spiegel’.” also suggestion that medication could be suitably applied thereby.

But if we depart from consideration of the mere utilitarian artisan in medicine I think there is little difficulty in establishing a good case for the study of history by medical practitioners. My own reason for reading a good deal upon the subject is of a low kind. I read for my own enjoyment. I have no active conscious high-flown reasons to give for my own personal practice. This, however, is despicable, and will not satisfy the high requirements of your present-day moralist. The same plea might be set up for drinking a glass of wine—pure self-indulgence.

To satisfy such superior persons as despise the pursuit of pleasures for their own sake, we must look about for justification of more high-sounding quality, and if, unlike the League of Nations, they are founded on a true reading of human nature, so much the better. I therefore borrow the motto of Johann Ludwig Choulant because I believe it is true: “Die Geschichteiner Wissenchaft ist der Hort ihrer Freiheit; sie duldet ihr kein einseitige Heherrschung,” which, translated into good Americanese, means: “The history of a science is the palladium of its freedom; it prevents it from being tyrannised over by narrow, bigoted view-points.” Now this seems to me to mean a great deal, for at all periods our practitioners were well-satisfied with their position and much inclined like Faust’s famulus to glory in the splendid achievements of their own times.

One notable exception to this was Hippocrates himself, who acknowledges that the past had given us all we started with.
If arrogance is not an inborn self-nurtured quality, if it is subject at all to the benign influences of reason and knowledge, there is no study so likely to soften and moderate it as that of history, which shows that of our predecessors in a more ridiculous light than that by which we see our own at present. Ours has scarcely more justification, for the difference between our acquisitions and those of a thousand years ago, great as it appears to us, is infinitesimal when compared with the limitless mass of things still unknown. Looked at from this point of view the study of history must be of a deep and wide ethical value, and help beyond most studies to the becoming grace of modesty or rather moderation, so highly valued by the ancient Greeks, little as it is evident in their modern representatives.

As an instrument of purely intellectual training it is admitted now upon all sides that history is taking every succeeding year a larger and more prominent place in the curricula of educational establishments, and, as is so often observed, the medical schools are coming, though slowly, into line. At Vienna there have been Saturday lectures upon this subject for as long as I remember. At Paris there have been Professors of History at the Faculty and College of France since far back in the past century—also in Germany for many years. Edinburgh University has introduced a Chair of History of Medicine, Oxford and Cambridge have lectureships and the University College of London has a chair for the same study. In America, with their princely endowments, several Schools of Medicine have their professors of the history of their subject and much fine research work is going on there. Indeed it is from the United States that we have received what I believe is the best recent textbook in English upon this subject, and one of less pretension than has recently appeared from the same quarter. Much very valuable work is being done in England, but I think no textbook going into the whole subject since Withington in 1893, although there are many dealing with one part or another of the subject. I will only name among these recent writers Singer, Allbutt and Osler. From these few facts you will readily infer that the study, whether useful or not, is gaining ground with rapidity and there is little doubt that our New Zealand University will have to follow in this good direction if it is to claim place for modernism.