“The dispassionate intellect, the open mind, the unprejudiced observer, exist in an exact sense only in a sort of intellectualist folk-lore; states even approaching them cannot be reached without a moral and emotional effort most of us cannot or will not make.” MindStatesScienceEffortMoralEmotionalFolksIntellectObserversOpen MindDispassionate Author:Wilfred Trotter
“The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science.” MindLittlesIdeasBodyScienceEnergyActingKnownStrangeScientistLikesNew IdeasScience And ReligionProteinScience Religion Author:Wilfred Trotter
“The first [quality] to be named must always be the power of attention, of giving one's whole mind to the patient without the interposition of anything of oneself. It sounds simple but only the very greatest doctors ever fully attain it. ... The second thing to be striven for is intuition. This sounds an impossibility, for who can control that small quiet monitor? But intuition is only interference from experience stored and not actively recalled. ... The last aptitude I shall mention that must be attained by the good physician is that of handling the sick man's mind.” MenGivingMindFirstsWholeLastsScienceSoundSimpleAttentionQualityGreatnessQuietDoctorsSickPatientSimplicityOneselfIntuitionPhysiciansImpossibilityInterferenceAptitudeSick Man Author:Wilfred Trotter
“The truly scientific mind is altogether unafraid of the new, and while having no mercy for ideas which have served their turn or shown their uselessness, it will not grudge to any unfamiliar conception its moment of full and friendly attention, hoping to expand rather than to minimize what small core of usefulness it may happen to contain.” MindMayIdeasMomentsHappensTruthScienceTurnsAttentionMercyCoreFriendlyConceptionUsefulnessGrudgeUnfamiliarUnafraidUselessness Author:Wilfred Trotter
“The air of caricature never fails to show itself in the products of reason applied relentlessly and without correction. The observation of clinical facts would seem to be a pursuit of the physician as harmless as it is indispensable. [But] it seemed irresistibly rational to certain minds that diseases should be as fully classifiable as are beetles and butterflies. This doctrine ... bore perhaps its richest fruit in the hands of Boissier de Sauvauges. In his Nosologia Methodica published in 1768 ... this Linnaeus of the bedside grouped diseases into ten classes, 295 genera, and 2400 species.” ShouldMindReasonFactsShowsHandsSeemsCertainClassFailingAirProductsTenDiseaseSpeciesFruitPursuitDoctrineRationalObservationButterflyBoresPhysiciansIndispensableCorrectionsCaricaturesClassificationClinicalsBeetlesLinnaeus Author:Wilfred Trotter
“It is necessary to guard ourselves from thinking that the practice of the scientific method enlarges the powers of the human mind. Nothing is more flatly contradicted by experience than the belief that a man distinguished in one or even more departments of science, is more likely to think sensibly about ordinary affairs than anyone else.” ThinkingMenMindHumansBeliefPracticeOrdinaryMethodAffairDepartmentHuman MindDistinguishedScientific Method Author:Wilfred Trotter
