Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1886-07-31
Nostradamus, Medicine, America.

words II VIII leave the notorious
charlatan, Nostradamus, to float down
the stream of time with Mother Ship
ton, Cagliosteo and Moll Pitcher"
What tea party that! 1t is to be
hoped that Nostradamus and Caglios-
teo thus "afioat" with their best girls
will have a gay old time of it.
Onthe contrary, in this my final
contribution on the subject, | will
leave the famous Nostradamus, the
classical scholar, the prophet, the
Irregular bred" M. d., the successful
practitioner, who "cured the plague"
and was consulted for diseases by
every class of persons" just where
the record heretofore quoted places
him, without wasting time to vindi-
cate him against the filings of "Jodell"
and other satirists of his day.
Intelligent people know full well
that the successful struggle upward to
fame provokes envy, jealousy and de-
traction. Nostradamus was no ex-
ception to the rule. Literary history
alas, is full of melancholy proofs of
this perversity in fallen man. AS the
poet says:
"There is wish in man no power can tame
publishing his neighbours shame,
On eagle wings immortal scandals fly,
While yirtuous actions are but born to die"
l confine myself to the two topics
remaining. The reply says:
every much ground is covered by
your correspondent in eulogizing the
medical schools and practitioners in
the days of Nostradamus, but he casts
not single ray of light on the meth
DDS of medical practice at that period,
to which particularly alluded in the
statement that medicine at that time
possessed little claim as on art, none
as a science"
Those terms unquestionably indi-
Gated the broad distinction between
"science" and "art," "little claim as
an art, none as a science" presenting
it too closely for misapprehension.
When, however, we are told they
particularly allude to the methods Of
medical practice" the explanation
hopelessly confOunds the meaning OF
the two. Science is defined as "knowl-
edge" Art as "the application OF
knowledge or science to effect a de.
sired object. "-Worcester's Diction.
airy.
Whewell says: "The distinction
between science and art is that science
is body of principles and deductions
to explain the nature of some matter
An art is body of precepts witt
practical skill for the completion O
some work."
Viewed as an art medicine has t.
do principally with remedies. Ii
contemplating it as science, how
ever, we are carried back of all thi
to the structure of the human body
its anatomy, physiology and condi
ton in health, to diseases, their char
acter, causes, land the changes
| functional or organic, which the,
produce. Surgery is founded o.
a knowledge of anatomy. A physi
clan may bea thoroughly scientifi
anatomist, yet so wanting in profes
sional art as not to be able to perform
any surgical operation. So he Nigh
have all the pure "science" of his pre-
fession without the "art" to reduc
that scientific knowledge to success
full practice through appropriate rem
edies. When combating the assel
ton that as late as the early porto
of the sixteenth century "medicin
had no claim as a SCIENCE" l wrote {
it Gas a science" not as an cart.
n What has the learned array Of sill
! remedies quoted in the reply to
with that question? At most the
g provethe physicians prescribing thel
to have been thus far untrustworth
!. practitioners, and in no way touch II
i true point at issue. The science
l. medicine is one thing, the practitiol
r, er's art quite another.
l. Itwould have been easy to carr
t. back the historic proof of the ju
d claims of medicine Gas science"
much earlier period than the TEN
century. What historical studeI
does not know the scientific charact
stamped upon that profession by Hi
pocrates, who fiourished 400 years b
fore Christ? Says Doctor Drape
\ 1--WE may assert that Il
medical philosophy of Hippocrates
worthy of our highest admiratio
since it exhibits the scientific conc
lions of deduction and inductio