Panacea: or The Universal Medicine
In one of his Coda columns last year, John Launer observed that even the most solid medical truths are embedded in provisionality.1 He suggested that we might do well to preface our professional pronouncements, even if we do so silently, with a phrase such as: ‘This is what we doctors believe at the moment, but we have made asses of ourselves in the past, and we may be making asses of ourselves again…’. Our cover picture of the frontispiece of a book from the library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Panacea: or The Universal Medicine by Giles Everard, published in 1659, illustrates his point rather well. Everard even worried that the therapeutic potential of tobacco was so great that it threatened the livelihood of doctors: ‘It is no great friend to physicians, though it be a physical plant; for the very smoke of it is held to be a great antidote against all venome and pestilential diseases’. We are grateful to the College for permission to reproduce the picture.
Reference
1. Launer J. Impaled on the invisible. Q J Med 2004; 97: 533–4.
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