Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science

Date

1861

Identifier

Truby King Collection W9 HR16

Type

Publisher

Boston: Ticknor and Fields

Abstract

Physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) studied under the Parisian pathologist Pierre Louis, who followed the méthode expectante, a therapeutic doctrine that states the physician’s role is to do everything possible to aid nature in the process of disease recovery, and to do nothing to hinder this natural process. Holmes unsettled medico feathers by criticising traditional medical practices and wrote – as shown here – that if all contemporary medicine was tossed into the sea ‘it would be all the better for mankind,—and all the worse for the fishes’. His no-nonsense approach was something that attracted Truby King, who has here noted various passages from Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science. King also thoroughly enjoyed reading the poet’s The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.

Files

Truby King Cab 4-0001.jpg

Tags

Citation

Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage, accessed October 5, 2024, https://ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/9436.