Truth in extremis : a plea against the murder of science by the gold-poison / by a searcher.

  • Shute, Richard, 1849-1886.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Truth in extremis : a plea against the murder of science by the gold-poison / by a searcher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    occasionally you produce a treatise with a name and form equally repellant. No doubt the scientific reviews (if any independent reviewers survive) will estimate your work at its proper worth ; but the public will shrug its shoulders, and suppose the article was written by a man who did not get one of your places, and turn yawning to the poUtical articles. You will then constitute a cluster of small and ex- tremely close trades-unions, differing from other societies of the same class in that whereas they have earned their wage in fair stand-up fight with their masters, you will have cajoled it out of the creduhty of the British public; and that whereas they do but a short day's work for a full day's wage, your work will in most cases be yet more scanty, and the value of the results far more problematical. Doubtless, sooner or later, some young and energetic M.P. will get up your iniquities, and sweep you away from the face of the earth ; but the time needed for your gradual cor- ruption and subsequent stagnation, until you reach the point of unbearable rottenness, is an epoch in the history of Enghsh Science, which no lover of truth can look forward to without shiverins^ horror. All that I have said about the difficulties of elect- ing your Researchers applies with at least equal force to the supervision of their work. Here, as before, you would be doubly independent of the healthy action of public opinion ; first, because of the greater part of your ''work the public would be given no opportunity of judging ; secondly, because that modicum which you yearly put forth in the form of Reports or Proceedings, would appear only on the bookshelves of public libraries, or in the houses of those good-natured millionaires who were anxious