Confessio medici / by the writer of "The young people".

  • Stephen Paget
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Confessio medici / by the writer of "The young people". Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    jealousies, and social trucklings, and win celebrity, however slowly, as Jenner had done, by the independent value of his work. Read Middlemarch^ I say to all students. Lydgate died long ago ; for it is near eighty years since he started in practice, at a time when most medical practice was still strutting or shambling along the old paths. But the whole story of his life—believe me, Gentlemen, it will help you more than all the novels of the last quarter of a century. Besides, it will save you from falling in love with young ladies like Rosamond. Read Middlemarch.^ I tell you : and, if Lydgate’s life does not touch you, ask yourselves whether you have any call to be doctors. But Lydgates are rare : and fathers and mothers, bent on making a doctor of one of the children, must not take the boy’s mere vagaries as a sign that he is intended for that profession. I mean to be a doctor like Father, says he, and they rejoice over him ; and a month later he wants to be a fireman, or a member of Parliament. Or he is neat with his fingers, rides well, understands the ways of animals, and loves to attend the minor ailments of the family : and then all that side of him goes, and he gives himself to poetry, or, which is worse, to music. Or he is ambitious, and will make a great name, a great discovery : and again the wind catches the weather-cock, and he praises a leisurely life and the happiness of insignificance. His parents look in vain
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