✍ Scribed by Beckwith, J. Bruce
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Three papers in this issue [Baljet and Oostra, 1998; Oostra et al., 1998a,b] review some of the fundamental Dutch contributions to descriptive teratology, and introduce the Vrolik Museum of the University of Amsterdam. This magnificent museum is an outstanding example of what can be accomplished by the intelligent and caring stewardship of venerable scientific collections. The importance of such collections of antique specimens is easily overlooked, and many fine collections have disappeared in the 20th century.
Today's young scientist, preoccupied by powerful new technologies that evolve week by week, is likely to regard dusty old tomes and ancient museum specimens as having no use in modern science, except as a source for amusing photos to enliven lectures and publications. These articles serve to remind us that the work of our predecessors has immense and permanent value.
A sometimes regrettable by-product of technological progress is the loss of skills that were once important. For example, Roentgen's great discovery ultimately rendered almost superfluous the skills of auscultation, percussion, and palpation that had evolved into a high art during the previous century. Powerful new imaging means have replaced sophisticated neurological, cardiac, and other physical examination techniques, while dramatically extending our ability to detect tiny lesions and early manifestations of disease. We rarely mourn the loss of the obsolete skills of the master clinicians of former generations, except when the power goes off, the machine breaks, or we land in a place where modern facilities do not exist. And sometimes, even in the most sophisticated setting, a patient presents with a symptom so baffling, or a lesion so atypical, that modern technology fails us. In those situations, among many others, we could benefit immensely from a resurrected Charcot, Laennec, or Osler.
Clinical skills are not the only thing we have lost. During the 300 years from the time of Vesalius until the mid-19th century, descriptive anatomy and pathology reigned supreme among the medical sciences. Some of the brightest minds of the time were dedicated to the dissection, description, and depiction of normal and abnormal anatomical structures. Conventional
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