A lecture on the importance of a knowledge of physical science to the members of all professions, being introductory to a course of lectures on the application of acoustics to the discovery of chest diseases, delivered to the members of the medical profession, and of the Philosophical Institution, at Birmingham / by Peyton Blakiston.

  • Peyton Blakiston
Date:
[cbetween 1800 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A lecture on the importance of a knowledge of physical science to the members of all professions, being introductory to a course of lectures on the application of acoustics to the discovery of chest diseases, delivered to the members of the medical profession, and of the Philosophical Institution, at Birmingham / by Peyton Blakiston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    LECTURE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. In directing our attention to the practical application of any one branch of Physical Science to professional purposes, we are natu- rally led to enquire whether the study of Natural Philosophy in genera], may not prove beneficial to members of all professions. To this enquiry I would address myself on the present occasion, not so much with a hope of laying any new or striking arguments before those who have previously considered the subject, as of arousing those who have hitherto been indifferent to it. Had it received that degree of attention to which it is entitled, I cannot but think that the im- portant bearings of this Science upon all classes of society, would long since have been universally acknowledged, and that ample provision would have been made for its cultivation in our public schools, and a certain knowledge of it required in the examina- tion for degrees at our great Universities. We can hardly suppose that the classic groves would have proved less inviting to the student, had they been traversed by the stream of Science which reflects on its bright surface such varied and beautiful forms of Divine wisdom and goodness—that his imagination would have been less fitted to follow the bards of old, in their lofty as- pirations and poetic visions, because new fields had been opened to it, by the contemplation of natural phenomena—that his mind disciplined to trace the causes and mutual dependance of these phenomena, would thereby have been rendered less capable of