Brodie's autobiography / Frederick Pollock.

  • Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Brodie's autobiography / Frederick Pollock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    denly, and there was some difficulty in maintaining the medical student and his legal brother in their re¬ spective positions in London. But prudence and self-sacrifice did their work, and the necessary studies in Lincoln’s Inn and at St. George’s suffered no interruption. Brodie now commenced the practice of taking written notes of cases, and dwells on the advantage he de¬ rived to the end of his professional life, by occasional reference even to the earliest of his note-books. The benefit of an immediate reduction into ■writing of observations, while the facts are fresh in the memory, cannot be too much estimated. As Bacon has it: * Beading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.’ There is no profession in which the equalities of fulness, readiness, and exactness are of more capital value than that of medicine; but of the three, exactness is probably the one which stands most in need of early cultivation and subsequent diligent maintenance. The persons among whom he executes it are so little capable of forming a judgment of, or exercising any controlling criticism upon, a physician’s work, that he is almost without check or guide, unless he imposes it on him¬ self by a regular and well-kept book of cases. It will be the log of his professional voyage. Assisted by its silent counsels, and with recol¬ lection refreshed by its steady wit¬ nessing, experience may best hope to attain to something like prophetic strain. Kept by the student, it will furnish the most rapid means of gaining accurate knowledge and confidence in the treatment of disease. Brodie congratulates him¬ self on having pursued his own studies at a time when the modern (as he thinks) excessive attendance at lectures was not required, which leaves no sufficient opportunity for practical study in the wards of the hospital, or for the acquisition of knowledge in other ways. The number of hours spent daily in lecture-rooms, the competition for prizes, and the cramming for ex¬ aminations, he considers as evils from which the young men of his own age were happily exempt. A similar change has now been going on for some time in the course of preparation to be pursued for other professions and intellectual employ¬ ments. It will be curious to see whether some veteran lawyer, or public servant, writing his own memoirs within the next few years, may have occasion to make the same sort of remark upon the effects of excessive compulsory instruction, and of over-stimulated competition, upon the real working value to their clients and to the nation of the means adopted with the inten¬ tion of improving the Bar and the Civil Service of the country. We trust it may not turn out that mischief is being done by the quantities of cramming and examina¬ tions now made requisite in so many quarters; but we cannot help thinking there is some danger of it; and such a warning as that given by Brodie, in his own profession, ought not to pass altogether with¬ out heed. After having filled the place of house-surgeon at St. George’s, Brodie may be considered to have, in fact, completed his professional educa¬ tion, and to be ready for practice. He began by assisting Home in his private operations, but continued his attendance at the hospital, and as a teacher at the Great Windmill- street School, never forgetting the pursuit of the high scientific in¬ quiries, which afford the best relief from the drudgery of daily work. In 1808 he was, at the compara¬ tively early age of twenty-five, elected as assistant-surgeon at St. George’s, and was the first to] set the example of delivering clinical lectures in a London hospital, and, from particular circumstances, had a much greater charge of the patients thrown upon him than would usually belong to his position. In 1810, Brodie became a member of the Boyal Society, at that time under the presidency of Sir Joseph Banks, whose own scientific labours, and opportunities for hospitable entertainment, fitted him especially for the post. He used to assemble men of science during the winter season, every Sunday evening, at
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