Letter to the Right Hon. the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Town-Council of Edinburgh, in regard to the Chair of Pathology in the University of Edinburgh / by James Syme.

  • James Syme
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to the Right Hon. the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Town-Council of Edinburgh, in regard to the Chair of Pathology in the University of Edinburgh / by James Syme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/20
    LETTER, &c. My Lord and Gentlemen, Having learned a few weeks ago, that the Council were nearly equally divided in opinion as to the question of abo- i lishing or maintaining the Chair of General Pathology, the Members of the Medical Faculty made a communica- l tion to you on the subject.* The object of this communi- ; cation was to express, in the strongest possible manner, the opinion which the Professors entertained in regard to this Chair; and, secondly, to relieve the Council from what i they seemed to feel would be an obstacle to abolishing it. As j might have been, and was anticipated, this proposal gave oc- s casion to much misrepresentation and acrimonious objection. I All the three candidates who are in the field have published their criticisms in a separate form, and the friends of these parties, have carried on the warfare through the medium of the newspapers with more zeal than discretion. As the mem¬ bers of the Council, with two or three exceptions, are not of the medical profession, it is not improbable that the various tenders of information and argument thus suppli¬ ed to them may have excited in their minds a considerable degree of mystification and uncertainty, not at all favour- I able to a decided course in the approaching settlement of the much agitated affair to which they refer. I therefore beg, very respectfully, to offer some considerations and state¬ ments, which my experience as a teacher of anatomy and sur¬ gery for the last fifteen years, and the attention which I have been more particularly led to bestow on the subjects con-