If there be one species of cant more detestable than another, it is that which eulogises what is called the practical man, as contradistinguished from the scientific. If by practical man is meant one who, having a mind well stored with scientific and general information, has his knowledge chastened, and his theoretic temerity subdued, by varied experience, nothing can be better; but if, as is commonly meant by the phrase, a practical man means one whose knowledge is only derived from habit or traditional system, such a man has no resource to meet unusual circumstances; such a man has no plasticity; he kills a man according to rule, and consoles himself, like Molière's doctor, by the reflection that a dead man is only a dead man, but a deviation from received practice is an injury to the whole profession.
Grove WR. Science and medical culture. Appleton's Journal of Popular Science and Art 1869. Jul 17: 503-4