Medicine: Price of Progress

The great Sir William Osler was gloomy about congenital heart disease. "[It has] only a limited clinical interest, as nothing can be done to remedy the defect or even to relieve the symptoms." As for pneumonia: "[It] can neither be aborted nor cut short by any known means . . ." Thus read the 1892 edition of Osler's Principles and Practices of Medicine.

Today, any well-read medical student can make vast corrections in Sir William's first edition, but man is still heir to numberless ills, and new problems come with new cures. Doctors' textbooks,...

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