Address before the "College of Physicians and Surgeons" at their annual commencement : March 14th, 1867 / by Henry W. Bellows.

  • Henry Whitney Bellows
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address before the "College of Physicians and Surgeons" at their annual commencement : March 14th, 1867 / by Henry W. Bellows. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    cists, geologists, and chemists, have been educated in our Medical Colleges; and in the newer parts of the country, if science is to find any representatives, it must be in its practising physicians. oSTow if there be anything which is needed-to balance the intense activity of the American mind, tending everywhere to hasty and dangerous con- clusions, it is scientific habits of thought and exact knowl- edge. There is a universal aptitude for thought, and a universal habit of expression in this country, but as uni- versal a distaste for patient investigation, careful consid- eration and cautious conclusions. We lack a drill and discipline of mind, proportioned to its tremendous free- dom, volume and force. In other countries the masses do not feel themselves entitled to opinions ; much less to ofl>hind judgments upon the most important subjects; and consequently their credulity, rashness and shallow- ness do not get any public expression. But here, one man's opinion, is, in his own judgment, as good as an- other's, and no question is so hidden, difficult and pro found, that he is not likely to give an opinion upon it, or lacking his own, to listen to any body's else opinion, and accept it according to its plausibility. The country is flooded with trashy and idle notions, taking on philosoph- ical names, which owe their contagious spread to the fact that the widest interest in truth and the mcst active-minded curiosity exists in America, and is the prey of its own unscientific education, and of the pretenders, enthusiasts and fanatics, that live by pan- dering to it, or are themselves spawned in its marshes of rank fertility. Eow, it is only medical men, who have much power to correct this perilous tendency, by their influence over popular education, their acquaintance with the sources of credulity, and the causes of mental epidemics, and their own rooted habits of cautious and precise investigation, and slow and measured inference.
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