The Growth of Truth

[Thux BJoriu 077 OCT. 27, i9o6.] HARVEIAN ORATION. INIDICAL JOURNAL 17 = Eudoxus with his chief good, which he placed in THE GROWTH OF TRUTH: pleasure, impregnated Epicurus; the four elements of Empedocles, Aristotle; the doctrine of the ancient AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE DISCOVERY OF THE Thebans, Pythagoras and Plato; geometry, Euclid" (De Generatione). CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. And, thirdly, to scientific truth alone may the homo BEING THE HLRVEIAN ORATION DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL mensura principle be applied, since of all mental treasures COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, LONDON, OCTOBER 18TH, 1906. of the race it alone compels general acquiescence. That this general acquiescence, this aspect of certainty, is not BY WILLIAM OSLER, M.D., F.R.S., reached per saltum, but is of slow, often of difficult, growth-marked by failures and frailties, but crowned at MEG;O17S PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. last with an acceptance accorded to no other product of mental activity is illustrated by every important discovery from Copernicus to Darwin. ONLY those of us, Mr. President and Fellows, who have The growth of Truth corresponds to the states of had the good fortune to hold the distinguished position knowledge described by Plato in the Theaetetus-acqui- which by your kind grace, Sir, I hold to-day-only those of sition, latent possession, conscious possession. Scarcely us who have delivered the Harveian Oration, can appre- a discovery can be named which does not present these ciate the extraordinary difficulties besetting a subject phases in its evolution. Take, for example, one of the every aspect of which has been considered, very often, too, most recent: Long years of labour gave us a full know- by men who have brought to the task a combination of ledge of syphilis; centuries of acquisition added one learning and literary skill at once the envy and the de- fact to another, until we had a body of clinical and spair of their successors. But I take it, Sir, that in this pathological knowledge of remarkable fullness. For Ambarvalia or commemorative festival for blessing the the last quarter of a century we have had latent fruits of our great men, ordained definitely as such by him possession of the cause of the disease, as no one whose memory is chiefly in our minds to-day, our pre- could doubt the legitimate inference from disco- sence here in due order and array confers distinction veries in other acute infections. The conscious pos- upon an occasion of which the oration is but an incident. session has just been given to us. After scores of But, honour worthy of such a theme should be asso- investigators had struggled in vain with the problem, ciated with full knowledge of the conditions under which came Schaudinn with an instinct for truth, with a these great men lived asid moved; and here comes in the capacity to pass beyond the routine of his day, and with real difficulty, because it is rarely possible to bring the a vision for the whole where others had seen but in part. fruits of independent critical investigation into their lives It is one of the tragedies of science that this brilliant and works. Particularly hard is it for those of us who investigator, with capabilities for work so phenomenal, have had to live the life of the arena: our best efforts bear should have been cut off at the very threshold of his the stamp of the student, not of the scholar. In my own career. The cancer problem, still in the stage of latent case, a deep reverence for the mighty minds of old, and a possession, awaits the advent of a man of the same type. keen appreciation of the importance to our profession of a In a hundred other less important problems, acquisition study of history, may be put in the scales against defects has by slow stages become latent possession; and there as to the appreciation of which I have still remaining suf- needs but the final touch-the crystal in the saturated ficient self-detachment. The lesson of the day is the solution-to give us conscious possession of the truth. lesson of their lives. But because of the ever-increasing But when these stages are ended, there remains the final mental strain in this age of hurry, few of us have the struggle for general acceptance. Locke's remark that leisure, fewer still, I fear, the inclination, to read it "Truth scarce ever yet carried it by vote anywhere al. its thoroughly. Only with a knowledge of the persistency first appearance " is borne out by the history of all dis- with which they waged the battle for Truth, and the coveries of the first rank. The times, however, are greatness of their victory, does the memory of the changing; and it is interestIng to compare the cordial illustrious dead become duly precious to us. welcome of the pallid spirochaete with the chilly reception History is simply the biography of the mind of man; of the tubercle bacillus. Villemin had done his great and our interest in history,. and its educational value to work, Cohinheim and Salmonson had finally solved the us, is directly proportionate to the completeness of our problem of infectivity, when Koch published his study of the individuals through whom this mind has memorable studies. Others before him had seen the been manifested. To understand clearly our position in bacillus, but the conscious possession of the truth- only any science to-day, we must go back to its beginnings, came with his marvellous technique. Think of the and trace its gradual development, following certain laws, struggle to seeure acceptance! The seniors among us who diflicult to interpret and often obscured in the brilliancy lived through tllat instructive period remember well that of achievements-laws which everywhere illustrate this only those who were awake when the dawn appeared biography, this human endeavour, working through the assented at once to the brilliant demonstration. We are long ages; and particularly is this the case with that his- better prepared to-day; and a great discovery like that of tory of the organized experieiace of the race which we call Schaudinn is immediately put to the test by experts in science. many lands, and a verdict is given in a few months. We In the first place, like a living organism, Truth grows, may have become more plastic and receptive, but I doubt and its gradual evolution may be traced from the tiny it; eveni our generation-that great generation of the germ to the mature product. Never springing, Minerva- last quarter of the nineteenth century, had a practical like, to full stature at once, Truth may suffer all the demonstration of the slowness of the acceptation of an hiazards incident to generation and gestation. Much of obvious truth in the long fight for the aseptic treatment of history is a record of the mishaps of trulths which have wounds. There may be present some who listened, as I struggled to the birth, only to die or else to wither in did in October, 1873, to an introductory lecture at one of premature decay. Or the germ may be dormant for the largest of the metropolitan schools, the burden of centuries, awaiting the fullness of time. which was the finality of surgery. The distinguished Secondly, all scientific truth is conditioned by the state author and teacher, dwelling on the remarkable achieve- of knowledge at the time of its announcement. Thus, at ments of the past, concluded that the art had all but the beginning of the seventeenth century, the science of reached its limit, little recking that within a mile from optics and mechanical appliances had not made possible where he spoke, the truth for which he and thousands had (so far as the human mind was concerned) the existence been striving-now a conscious possession in the hands of of blood capillaries and blood corpuscles. Jenner could Joseph Lister-would revolutionize it. With scores of not have added to his inquiry a discourse on immunity; surgeons here and there throughout the world this truth Sir William Perkin and the chemists made Koch possible; had been a latent possession. Wounds had healed per Pasteur gave the conditions that produced Lister; Davy primarn since Machaon's day; and there were men before and others furnished the preliminaries necessary for Joseph Lister who had striven for cleanliness in surgical anaesthesia. Everywhere we find this invariable filiation, technique; but not until he appeared could a great truth -one event following the other in orderly sequence- become so manifest that it everywhere compelled "Mind begets mind," as Harvey says; "opinion is the acquiescence. Yet not without a battle-a long and source of opinion. Demrocritus with his atoms, and grievous battle, as many of us well knew who had to [239I] Ttz Bzr. 1078 KimieLL Jo=ALI THE GROWT:EI OF TRU2H. [OCT. 27, 1906- contend in hospitals with the opposition of men who could least two generations the best energies of its best minds not-not who would not-see the truth. were devoted to the study of their writings. How Sooner or later-insensibly, unconsciously-the iron numerous and important is that remarkable group of men, yoke of conformity is upon our necks; and in our minds, the medical humanists of the Renaissance, we may judge as in our bodies, the force of habit becomes irresistible. by a glance at Bayle's Biographie MUdicale, in which the From our teachers and associates, from our reading, from lives are arranged in chronological order.

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