Excerpt from The Canadian Journal of Medicine and Surgery, Vol. 7: A Journal Published Monthly in the Interest of Medicine and Surgery; January, 1900
A magnum opus of this description has a great advantage over the Encyclop?dia Britannica, in that it is all on one subject, while in the Encyclop?dia the enchanted reader is constantly vexed by being wrenched here and there from one subject to another. The dream of Casper Neumann was to write on through eternity on the one subject with the same circle of readers patiently following him in s?cula s?culorum.
To writers of this class the history of medicine offered a field of satisfactory vastness, and presently, through the sombre penumbra cast by the subject into the limitless spaces of oblivion, a gloomy constellation of German literary men began to heavily move in slow circles.
A Little work on the history of medicine had, it is true, already been published in England by Dr. Freind, who, it will be remembered was the same Freind who was imprisoned by Walpole for making some unseemly remarks in the House of Parliament about a bishop; and released at the instigation of the great Dr. Mead, to whom Martyn, the old professor of botany, dedicated his edition of Virgil"s Georgics, a work replete with notes and marginali?, of which every other paragraph has some admiring reference to Dr. Mead"s private library. Dr. Mead was not only a man of literary culture, however, but also a man of action; and though Freind was a foe in the lists of science, he was after all a physician, and as the professional blood was then, as now, thicker than water, Mead fervently desired to see Freind out of the Tower, after which, in all probability, he would settle scientific differences, but not till then. So he waited until Sir Robert had another attack, most likely of gout, and had called him in, whereupon, plucking up a brave spirit, more especially as the Prime Minister"s was at that time probably very weak, he told Sir Robert flatly that not a pill nor a plaister should he get from him until he had let Freind go free. Even so they importuned Pharaoh, and, like Pharaoh, Sir Robert let go the peccant Freind; and, we hope, was amply benefited by the treatment which, after such an act of atonement, was no doubt at once forthcoming from the propitiated and magnific Mead.
But Freind"s "History of Medicine" was only a little trifle in a couple of large, fat, leather-bound volumes, and the German authors saw that the subject had not been properly handled and was capable of more voluminous and comprehensive treatment. I fancy they must have been disgusted with Freind.
However, after a couple of tentative attempts by Heinrich Schultze and Ernst Hebenstreit, Gabriel Hensler formally opened the new field of activity with an unpretentious bagatelle of ten or a dozen volumes, just to show what the capabilities of the new subject were.
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