NZMJ, 1923

No one who reads diligently at the present day medical literature and journalism, as distinguished from surgical, can fail to be impressed with the vast extent he surveys, but it is for the most part an arid waste, with only here and there an oasis to gladden the eye. It has not the fertility for which Bacon strove. The cause and result are alike loose thinking, and advance is in a circle rather than in progression. The readers are as much to blame as the writers, for if the style is dark and diffuse it is thought to be more profound and philosophical than if it were terse and perspicuous. In the same way muddy water is usually considered deeper than it is because the observer cannot see to the bottom. What seems obviously hard thinking must be accurate and original, such as certain forms of German philosophy and science—but this view, to borrow Gibbon’s immortal phrase, “though probable is certainly false.” Many apparently profound conclusions are based only upon hasty, scanty and careless observation, for no architectural adornment will make a building firmer than the foundation on which it rests.

It is impossible for any man of average intelligence to understand much of the jargon written by so-called medical authorities on, for instance, psycho-analysis and the psychology of dreams, and yet attempts are made to foist these fantasies on the innocent through the medical curriculum. This is not to say that there may not be some truth in the new thought of the medical psychologist, but it is overlaid with verbiage, with nonsense, and, sometimes, with filth. Away with the indecent Oedipus complex and such turgid nonsense as, for instance. “If we now examine the day-dream as a product of affective thinking on the fore-conscious level we cannot deny it a teleological character.” Are we to go back to the ways of the schoolmen and abandon neurology for psychological speculation? God forbid. Medicine is becoming less rational and more speculative at a time when Religion, on a foundation of faith and experience is more and more set free from credulity. If we cannot explain by medical psychology what Coleridge called the “myriad-mindedness” of Shakespeare, there are many who will attempt the task with the aid of advanced endocrinology and sesquipedalianism, and one extravagance leads to another. Criminals are to be put in hospital instead of the jail, and free-will and personal responsibility, and scientific observation, experiment and deduction will all disappear in the Golden Age that is heralded. Let us not be carried off our course by every wind of doctrine and forget the helm and compass. The speculation of many medical writers is like a fog-bank at sea which at first sight looks like the Delectable Mountains but, seen through a clear glass, it is only unsubstantial vapours.