TRUTH AND POETRY CONCERNING URIC ACID
https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Poetry-Concerning-Uric-Acid/dp/1022071785
https://medchiarchives.blogspot.com/p/lewellys-f-barker.html
Autobiography, Time and the Physician.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
New Facts and Theories Concerning Uric Acid Only Slowly Assimilated by the Profession—Reasons Therefor—Facile Publications—Unbridled Commercialism—Purpose of the Present Review.
In the slow but steady advance which medicine is making, new facts are often established for a long time before they meet with general acceptance, and old theories have had their foundations washed out from under them years or decades before their fallacies have become generally recognized by the profession.
It is easy to be too severe in criticizing the inertia of medical men in this respect, for the very conservatism which accounts for the facts mentioned has gone far to protect our guild from the too speedy welcoming of immature conceptions, on the one hand, and from the too easy rejection, on the other, of theories which, under assault by partisan or ignorant critics, prove ultimately to be sound. It is not an unwillingness to accept new truth nor a desire stubbornly to retain error which is characteristic of our profession. On the contrary, it is rather the fear of being duped concerning the new or of being cheated of old and well-tried good which animates it and determines its action or inaction.
Now that the media of communication among physicians have been so marvelously multiplied, it may be urged that the excuse for a continuance in ignorance regarding medical facts and theories is not what it formerly was.
Medical journals are, it is true, more widely read than ever before by the profession; the nations, through the activity of collective reviews and international periodicals, have been brought closer together than at any previous time; were the increased information brought to medical readers always reliable, the profession’s knowledge ought to be advanced by leaps and bounds.
Unfortunately, at a time when everybody writes, the views which are expressed in the various medical journals are so contradictory that the mind without a special scientific training often becomes confused, knows not what to believe, and naturally settles down on the convictions which suit its own inclination best or on statements which have been gained from some authority for which it has a particular predilection.
The preliminary training which the average medical man has obtained hitherto in subjects like chemistry, physics and biology has been totally inadequate, when discussions involving disputes in these domains are brought to his attention, to permit him to form sound judgments concerning them.
A further difficulty for the medical man in practice lies in the inequality of the articles which are admitted to the pages of even those medical journals which he has been taught to regard as the best. So disparate are the views expressed in different articles in the same number of a given journal that the reading average medical mind often turns from the reading of them with a feeling of uncertainty, if not of disgust.
It is one of the objects of THE JOURNAL [JAMA] in its editorial pages to present, from time to time, as accurately as it can, synopses of the real advances which take place in medical research. It is and has been its endeavor to promulgate as firm convictions...