The Evolution of Modern Medicine

AIL to the Pacific with some AncientMariner, and traverse day by day that

silent sea until you reach a region never before furrowed by keel where a

tiny island, a mere speck on the vast ocean, has just risen from the depths, a

little coral reef capped with green, an atoll, a mimic earth, fringed with life,

built up through countless ages by life on the remains of life that has passed

away. And now, with wings of fancy, join Ianthe in the magic car of Shelley,

pass the eternal gates of the flaming ramparts of the world and see his vision:

Below lay stretched the boundless Universe! There, far as the remotest line

That limits swift imagination's flight, Unending orbs mingled in mazy mo-

tion, Immutably fulfilling Eternal Nature's law. Above, below, around, The

circling systems formed A wilderness of harmony. (Daemon of the World,

Pt. I.)

And somewhere, "as fast and far the chariot flew," amid the mighty globes

3 SIR WILLIAM OSLER

would be seen a tiny speck, "earth's distant orb," one of "the smallest lights

that twinkle in the heavens." Alighting, Ianthe would find something she

had probably not seen elsewhere in her magic flight-life, everywhere encir-

cling the sphere. And as the little coral reef out of a vast depth had been built

up by generations of polyzoa, so she would see that on the earth, through

illimitable ages, successive generations of animals and plants had left in stone

their imperishable records: and at the top of the series she would meet the

thinking, breathing creature known as man. Infinitely little as is the archi-

tect of the atoll in proportion to the earth on which it rests, the polyzoon, I

doubt not, is much larger relatively than is man in proportion to the vast sys-

tems of the Universe, in which he represents an ultra-microscopic atom less

ten thousand times than the tiniest of the "gay motes that people the sun-

beams." Yet, with colossal audacity, this thinking atom regards himself as

the anthropocentric pivot around which revolve the eternal purposes of the

Universe. Knowing not whence he came, why he is here, or whither he is go-

ing, man feels himself of supreme importance, and certainly is of interest-to

himself. Let us hope that he has indeed a potency and importance out of all

proportion to his somatic insignificance. We know of toxins of such strength

that an amount too infinitesimal to be gauged may kill; and we know that

"the unit adopted in certain scientific work is the amount of emanation Civ-

ilization is but a filmy fringe on the history of man. Go back as far as his

records carry us and the story written on stone is of yesterday in comparison

with the vast epochs of time which modern studies demand for his life on

the earth. For two millions (some hold even three millions) of years man

lived and moved and had his being in a world very different from that upon

which we look out. There appear, indeed, to have been various types of

man, some as different from us as we are from the anthropoid apes. What

upstarts of yesterday are the Pharaohs in comparison with the men who sur-

vived the tragedy of the glacial period! The ancient history of man-only

now beginning to be studied-dates from the Pliocene or Miocene period;

the modern history, as we know it, embraces that brief space of time that

has elapsed since the earliest Egyptian and Babylonian records