This leads me here to say that physicians trust too much to the simple
dicta of men who may be very eminent in some department of natural
history, and yet ignorant in the very department about which, being
called upon, they have given an opinion. All everywhere have so much
to learn that we should be very careful how we reject new truths,
especially when they come from one of our number educated in our own
medical schools, studied under our own masters. If the subject is
one about which we know nothing, we had better say so when asked our
opinion, and we should receive with respect what is respectfully offered
by a man whom we know to be honest, a hard worker, eminent in his
department by long and tedious labors. If he asks us to look over his
evidence, do so in a kindly spirit, and not open the denunciations of
bar room vocabularies upon the presenter, simply because we don't see
his point. In other words, we should all be receptive, but careful in
our assimilation, remembering that some of the great operations in
surgery, for example, came from laymen in low life, as the operation for
stone, and even the operation of spaying came from a swineherd.

It is my desire, however, to have this settled as far as can be among
scientists, but for the practical uses of practicing physicians I say
that far more evidence has been adduced by you in support of the cause
of intermittent fever than we have in the etiology of many other
diseases. I take the position that so long as no one presents a better
history of the etiology of intermittent fever by facts and observations,
your theory must stand. This, too, notwithstanding what may be said to
the contrary.

Certainly you are to be commended for having done as you have in this
matter. It is one of the great rights of the profession, and duties
also, that if a physician has or thinks he has anything that is new and