Moderns and ancients: the "new cardiology" in Britain 1880-1930.

In so far as there are two schools, an old and a new, in cardiology, there are two schools in the following sense. There is a small body of workers who spend their time and energies in the collection of new knowledge, a body of workers who insist upon proof to demonstration or an approach to that ideal. This school, if school it be, has been productive, some would say extremely productive, during the past few decades. There is, on the other hand, a large number of clinicians who speak and write largely upon questions of cardiac pathology, but who do not demand or seek exacting proofs, but are content, as far as these questions are concerned, with a more philosophic and therefore more indolent attitude. This school, if school it be, is sterile; it is sterile because of its method of thought and inquiry.'