- Email: [email protected]
ON CREDULITY
267
Thirdly, Mr. Van den Bergh assumes that anyone who asks for such a certificate is a scrimshanker and not to be believed. Many employees contracting a mild illness will stay in bed and not ask for a certificate, either for their employers or for National Insurance, in the hopes that they will be fit for work in a day or two. They would not need a certificate if Mr. Van den Bergh trusted them and believed what they said. Redditch,
G. F. HENDERSON.
Worcestershire.
ON CREDULITY
SIR,—Developing
the
of his
argument
Harveian
Oration-the Royal College of Physicians versus
Credulity
- Lord Moran at times comes perilously near to spiking his own guns. By admitting the innate credulity of human nature he fosters the presumption of the college in making war on human nature. " The trouble was not so much that the college was alone in the fight, but rather that it was at war with human nature." Such a conflict, to be successful, calls for a worthy protagonist indeed ! The aim may seem laudable, as seen in the preamble of an early 16th-century Act of Parliament which he quotes : Forasmuch as the science and cunning of Physic ... is daily, within the realm, exercised by a great multitude of ignorant persons .. ; but to proceed on Gestapo or Court of Star Chamber lines, as with " Dr. Alexander Leighton a doctor of Leyden University," by secret trials and infliction of personal mutilation, smacks of low-grade intelligence, lack of imagination, and selfrighteousness that augurs ill for its patrons. Yet Lord Moran quotes the incident as an occasion where " the boisterous vigour of the time did not always temper justice [italics mine] with mercy." I am sure he did not mean to call this justice ; but, even so, justice, when dealing with an opponent, is not enough if either side is to benefit. Surely the history of the college would have been more bright, and Lord Moran’s Harveian Oration more stimulating, if instead of persecuting quacks they had at least tried to temper judgment with understanding. Credulity and Faith are very close partners ; even Bishop Berkeley says : "
"
"
You must mix some uncertainty with faith, if you would have faith be."
If there are,
Lord Moran says, many
as
prefer to go to a quack rather than practitioner, whose fault is it?
a
people who registered medical
-
Lord Moran’s idea of raising the standard of medicine (a) by improving its academic status, and (b)- by " making the physician independent of the patient’s favour " is in keeping with the worst traditions of the college. " How time and again," he says " the choicest spirits of their age frittered away their time in general practice, how even Harvey himself rode on his horse over the countryside, quieting the fears of old women ..." If anything is more likely to put Ilarvey’s poor ghost back into circulation I should like to hear it.-From academic medicine, a
profession independent of the patient, and another set of backroom boys, Good Lord deliver us " ! To make war on credulity and the heretic in medicine may be a worthy but it is also a very difficult, not to say undignified or embarrassing, exercise, especially as the "
heretic of one age tends to be the orthodox of the next. It certainly cannot be waged from the platform of selfrighteousness, for the first doctor was a quack. Nor can it be waged from the laboratory- or study, because our real contacts are not there ; nor even yet from the ivory towers to which
our colleagues might-elevate
then could touch the hem of London, W.1.
our
us, for who
garment ... ?
W. PINNINGTON JENSON.
Obituary AUSTIN EDWIN
COOPER
B.A., M.D. Dub]., L.M. Dr. A. E. Cooper, consulting anaesthetist to the London Hospital, died on Jan. 19 at the age of 84. He was born in Dublin and was educated at Leeson School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his B.A. in 1891. He continued his medical studies at Trinity College and at St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, graduating as M.B. in 1895 and proceeding to his 3.1.D. the following year. After holding house-appointments at the Adelaide Hospital in Dublin and at the Royal Pimlico Dispensary he was appointed anaesthetist to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, assistant anaesthetist to the West London Hospital, and later anaesthetist to the London Hospital. He also served the Chelsea Clinical Society as treasurer and vice-president. During the late war he was appointed an anaesthetic specialist under the Emergency Medical Service, and though over 70 years of age he spent long hours in the operating-theatres at Whipps Cross Hospital. A colleague writes : "Austin Cooper was essentially an anaesthetist of the old school and seldom departed from the methods in which he was brought up. He depended almost entirely on nitrous oxide, chloroform, and ether. Open ether was his great standby and he was a master at maintaining deep quiet anaesthesia over long periods for abdominal operations. He rarely attended meetings and wrote little ; it is as a safe practical anaesthetist that he will be remembered." Dr. Cooper married in 1898, Mary, daughter of John Hunter, of Hollybrook Park, co. Dublin. She died in 1946. There were two sons and a daughter of the
marriage. WtLLIAM HENRY ROWELL
O.B.E., M.D., D.Hyg. Durh., D.P.11. THE career of Dr. W. H. Rowell, who died at Grangeover-Sands on Jan. 4, at the age of 79, fell into two almost equal parts, for he had spent almost as many useful years in general practice as in the school health service. After qualifying in 1895 he held house-appointments at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne, and he took his M.D. Durh. in 1898 and his B.HYG. with honours the following year. He volunteered for service in the South African War and served at Kimberley and the Relief of Mafeking. On his return he was elected- an honorary freeman of the City of Newcastle. - The next fourteen years he spent in general practice at Grimsby. While there, he joined the local Territorials, the Lincolnshire Yeomanry. For his services during the 1914-18 war he was twice mentioned in despatches and- was --
appointed
O.B.E.
On his return in= 1919 he took the D.HYG. and began what was to prove the second part of his career, when in 1920 he entered the public-health department at Stockport. He was one of the pioneers in the school health service and he served as assistant school medical officer in Stockport until 1943, when he retired. J. Y. writes : " Dr. Rowell enjoyed his ten years of leisure, near the lakes he loved so well, in the pleasant and soft surroundings of Grange-over-Sands. These were in keeping with his own nature. He was a modest man, full of love and sympathy for his fellow men. His end came quickly with a heart attack, as he would have wished. He is survived by his wife." ALLAN PLEDGER PIGGOT
M.R.C.S. Piggot, formerly deputy medical superintendent
-
Dr. of St. James’ Hospital, Balham, where for over thirty years he devoted himself to research on the morbid anatomy of old age, died on Jan. 6. He qualified from Guy’s Hospital in 1903. He held appointments at several mental hospitals, including the Isle of Wight County Asylum, before he settled at St. James’ Hospital in 1915. In 1919, on his return from service with the R.A.M.C., he became deputy medical
Thirdly, Mr. Van den Bergh assumes that anyone who asks for such a certificate is a scrimshanker and not to be believed. Many employees contracting a mild illness will stay in bed and not ask for a certificate, either for their employers or for National Insurance, in the hopes that they will be fit for work in a day or two. They would not need a certificate if Mr. Van den Bergh trusted them and believed what they said. Redditch,
G. F. HENDERSON.
Worcestershire.
ON CREDULITY
SIR,—Developing
the
of his
argument
Harveian
Oration-the Royal College of Physicians versus
Credulity
- Lord Moran at times comes perilously near to spiking his own guns. By admitting the innate credulity of human nature he fosters the presumption of the college in making war on human nature. " The trouble was not so much that the college was alone in the fight, but rather that it was at war with human nature." Such a conflict, to be successful, calls for a worthy protagonist indeed ! The aim may seem laudable, as seen in the preamble of an early 16th-century Act of Parliament which he quotes : Forasmuch as the science and cunning of Physic ... is daily, within the realm, exercised by a great multitude of ignorant persons .. ; but to proceed on Gestapo or Court of Star Chamber lines, as with " Dr. Alexander Leighton a doctor of Leyden University," by secret trials and infliction of personal mutilation, smacks of low-grade intelligence, lack of imagination, and selfrighteousness that augurs ill for its patrons. Yet Lord Moran quotes the incident as an occasion where " the boisterous vigour of the time did not always temper justice [italics mine] with mercy." I am sure he did not mean to call this justice ; but, even so, justice, when dealing with an opponent, is not enough if either side is to benefit. Surely the history of the college would have been more bright, and Lord Moran’s Harveian Oration more stimulating, if instead of persecuting quacks they had at least tried to temper judgment with understanding. Credulity and Faith are very close partners ; even Bishop Berkeley says : "
"
"
You must mix some uncertainty with faith, if you would have faith be."
If there are,
Lord Moran says, many
as
prefer to go to a quack rather than practitioner, whose fault is it?
a
people who registered medical
-
Lord Moran’s idea of raising the standard of medicine (a) by improving its academic status, and (b)- by " making the physician independent of the patient’s favour " is in keeping with the worst traditions of the college. " How time and again," he says " the choicest spirits of their age frittered away their time in general practice, how even Harvey himself rode on his horse over the countryside, quieting the fears of old women ..." If anything is more likely to put Ilarvey’s poor ghost back into circulation I should like to hear it.-From academic medicine, a
profession independent of the patient, and another set of backroom boys, Good Lord deliver us " ! To make war on credulity and the heretic in medicine may be a worthy but it is also a very difficult, not to say undignified or embarrassing, exercise, especially as the "
heretic of one age tends to be the orthodox of the next. It certainly cannot be waged from the platform of selfrighteousness, for the first doctor was a quack. Nor can it be waged from the laboratory- or study, because our real contacts are not there ; nor even yet from the ivory towers to which
our colleagues might-elevate
then could touch the hem of London, W.1.
our
us, for who
garment ... ?
W. PINNINGTON JENSON.
Obituary AUSTIN EDWIN
COOPER
B.A., M.D. Dub]., L.M. Dr. A. E. Cooper, consulting anaesthetist to the London Hospital, died on Jan. 19 at the age of 84. He was born in Dublin and was educated at Leeson School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his B.A. in 1891. He continued his medical studies at Trinity College and at St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, graduating as M.B. in 1895 and proceeding to his 3.1.D. the following year. After holding house-appointments at the Adelaide Hospital in Dublin and at the Royal Pimlico Dispensary he was appointed anaesthetist to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, assistant anaesthetist to the West London Hospital, and later anaesthetist to the London Hospital. He also served the Chelsea Clinical Society as treasurer and vice-president. During the late war he was appointed an anaesthetic specialist under the Emergency Medical Service, and though over 70 years of age he spent long hours in the operating-theatres at Whipps Cross Hospital. A colleague writes : "Austin Cooper was essentially an anaesthetist of the old school and seldom departed from the methods in which he was brought up. He depended almost entirely on nitrous oxide, chloroform, and ether. Open ether was his great standby and he was a master at maintaining deep quiet anaesthesia over long periods for abdominal operations. He rarely attended meetings and wrote little ; it is as a safe practical anaesthetist that he will be remembered." Dr. Cooper married in 1898, Mary, daughter of John Hunter, of Hollybrook Park, co. Dublin. She died in 1946. There were two sons and a daughter of the
marriage. WtLLIAM HENRY ROWELL
O.B.E., M.D., D.Hyg. Durh., D.P.11. THE career of Dr. W. H. Rowell, who died at Grangeover-Sands on Jan. 4, at the age of 79, fell into two almost equal parts, for he had spent almost as many useful years in general practice as in the school health service. After qualifying in 1895 he held house-appointments at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne, and he took his M.D. Durh. in 1898 and his B.HYG. with honours the following year. He volunteered for service in the South African War and served at Kimberley and the Relief of Mafeking. On his return he was elected- an honorary freeman of the City of Newcastle. - The next fourteen years he spent in general practice at Grimsby. While there, he joined the local Territorials, the Lincolnshire Yeomanry. For his services during the 1914-18 war he was twice mentioned in despatches and- was --
appointed
O.B.E.
On his return in= 1919 he took the D.HYG. and began what was to prove the second part of his career, when in 1920 he entered the public-health department at Stockport. He was one of the pioneers in the school health service and he served as assistant school medical officer in Stockport until 1943, when he retired. J. Y. writes : " Dr. Rowell enjoyed his ten years of leisure, near the lakes he loved so well, in the pleasant and soft surroundings of Grange-over-Sands. These were in keeping with his own nature. He was a modest man, full of love and sympathy for his fellow men. His end came quickly with a heart attack, as he would have wished. He is survived by his wife." ALLAN PLEDGER PIGGOT
M.R.C.S. Piggot, formerly deputy medical superintendent
-
Dr. of St. James’ Hospital, Balham, where for over thirty years he devoted himself to research on the morbid anatomy of old age, died on Jan. 6. He qualified from Guy’s Hospital in 1903. He held appointments at several mental hospitals, including the Isle of Wight County Asylum, before he settled at St. James’ Hospital in 1915. In 1919, on his return from service with the R.A.M.C., he became deputy medical