An introductory address to the students of the Calcutta Medical College, on the 15th June 1803 / by J. Fayrer.

  • Joseph Fayrer
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introductory address to the students of the Calcutta Medical College, on the 15th June 1803 / by J. Fayrer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of this branch of knowledge is paramount ; without it, you are incapable of comprehending the nature of the vital processes upon which the very essence of existence depends. Your know- ledge of Medicine, too, must be empirical in the extreme, if you are ignorant of the composition and modes of combination of the agents you employ in the treatment of disease. Botany is the fourth subject of study of your first year, and though perhaps less directly important at first sight to the Medical student, yet it is one full of interest and importance too. Much of what you have learned in your physiological researches meets you here again. It is life in another shape that you have to study, and you will recognize laws of development, growth, and form similar to those you have already met with in the Animal Kingdom. The study of Botany, to use the words of Dr. Balfour, involves “ the ^consideration of the anatomical structure, external form, “function, classification, arrangement, and distribution of all “ forms of vegetable life over the globe at the present and former “ epochs, and the uses to which they are subservient, the examina- “ tion of the plant in its earlier stages of development when it “ appears a simple cell, and the pursuit of it through all its stages “ 0/ growth and development until it attains maturity ; a compre- “ hensive view of all the plants which cover the earth, from the “ minutest lichen or moss visible by aid of the microscope, to the “ most gigantic production of the tropics. It marks the relation “ which subsists between all members of the Vegetable World, and “ traces the mode in which the most despised weeds contribute “to the growth of the mighty denizen of the forest. It is a “ science which demands careful and minute investigation, re- “ quires great power of observation and research, and is well “ fitted to train the mental power to prompt and vigorous “ action.” The study of Botany especially commends itself to the Medical Student, for a large proportion of the agents used in Medicine are vegetable productions ; and to you particularly so, with the
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