Annals of medical history . figured in shapingmedical history in more waysthan one, must be countedVoltaire. It would be superlluous to add one word hereas to what Voltaires witand fancy and satire accomplished to estab-lish truth in theworld as a it seems not un-reasonable to suggestthat in fighting forgeneral tolerance, hedid more to advanceour profession thansome of its own mem-b( rs who, howeverdistinguished, com-promised with theold dogmas. It maybe remembered thatSir Thomas Browne(1605-82), in writingto correct Vulgar Errors, was proved hope-lessly enmeshed in them himself.
Annals of medical history . figured in shapingmedical history in more waysthan one, must be countedVoltaire. It would be superlluous to add one word hereas to what Voltaires witand fancy and satire accomplished to estab-lish truth in theworld as a it seems not un-reasonable to suggestthat in fighting forgeneral tolerance, hedid more to advanceour profession thansome of its own mem-b( rs who, howeverdistinguished, com-promised with theold dogmas. It maybe remembered thatSir Thomas Browne(1605-82), in writingto correct Vulgar Errors, was proved hope-lessly enmeshed in them himself. But Vol-taire, in addition to being a social reformer,did much to spread actual medical an encyclopedist he was obliged to treatof medical subjects, and he gave himselfa wide range; throughout all he wrote onthese topics appears an uncanny sagacitywhich led him to champion those explana-tions of human behavior which, as it turnsout, have best stood the test of time. Per-haps it cannot be said of him that he was. Marmontel, whose Moral Tale;salons of Paris. an original thinker. His genius was of adifferent order from Franklins, whose mostcasual glance at a subject resulted in someentirely new benefit to it. But he assembledfrom all parts of the earth stray bits of in-formation, fused them together and pre-sented them as a whole, in his own to his special talent he was able togive to the world views on medical topicssaner than those held by most of the physi-cians of the times. He is represented as the ruthless icono-clast, bitter and sarcastic andunforgiving. But he has a wayof tempering his invectiveswith a naive or witty wordwhich reveals a funda-mental belief in thegood intentions of hu-manity; and manyincidents in his life,of which I recall two,indicate quite plainlyto me that as a manhe was of an essential-ly kindly nature. Ap-preciating Marmon-tels verses, he urgedthis young man, atotal stranger to him,to come to Paris fromthe Limousin, withthe assu
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Keywords: ., bookauthorp, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectmedicine
