1848

First meeting of American Assn. for Advancement of Science in Phila, which grew out of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists (founded 1840) (Fye, 170, 178).  Elisha Bartlett publishes Enquiry into the Degree of Certainty in Medicine, “the best-known assessment of the certitude vouchsafed by a thoroughgoing program of empiricism. . . . Bartlett’s treatise was an assertion that French medical empiricism was more than merely an elite bludgeon for system bashing; it would lead to positive medical knowledge, to enduring truth” (Harley, 248).