The Practitioner Volume 10 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ...cast for close upon a century. The main exception to this rule will be found in the psychology of Locke, who carried the Baconian principles with regard to observation and experiment into the region of mind; but the philosophy of Locke did not produce a great influence upon medicipe until long subsequent to the time at present under consideration. It is therefore necessary, before proceeding further, to notice very briefly the Cartesian philosophy, both on account of its direct influence upon medical doctrines, and of its indirect influence in determining the form in which these doctrines were cast and the method adopted in evolving them. Descartes was impressed with the fact of how apt we are to be led astray by prejudices of education; and this led him to doubt everything until the evidence was so clear and cogent as to compel his assent. He found that he could doubt everything but the existence of the present consciousness. To doubt the existence of thought annihilates itself, for the very doubt is evidence of the reality of thought. Descartes therefore found that thought was the only certain existence; and further analysis showed him that all our knowledge could be resolved into thought; and hence, so far as he was concerned, all existence was thought. To the certainty of the existence of thought, analysis brought him down, and upon this synthesis must build up. The only objection which can be urged against this analysis, is that it is very incomplete; but when Descartes begins to build upon it, assumptions creep into the principle which were not the product of analysis. His famous formula, Uogito, ergo sum, assumed a great deal more than the certainty of the existence of thought. It assumed in the first place the existence of a...