Introductory address to the students of the Extra-Academical School of Medicine : Edinburgh, session 1853-4 / by R.J. Mackenzie.

  • Mackenzie, Richard James, 1821-1854.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory address to the students of the Extra-Academical School of Medicine : Edinburgh, session 1853-4 / by R.J. Mackenzie. 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.

    14/22 (page 12)
    liiboratur}', will show you that your stores are of a more or less volatile nature, and will require frequent replenishing. You must keep up the knowledge you have acquired by an occasional revision of your past studies, and thus avoid the wearisome, laborious, and Tuicertain task of what is commonly called getting it up, as the day {qiproaches, when it will be required. I have said that you have a trust-worthy guide for the arrange- ment of your studies in the regulations of the College of Surgeons. In one particular only would 1 have you to deviate from the recom- mendations there given. Twelve months is the period there men- tioned as the time allotted for the study of practical anatomy ; but I would advise you to spend more time than this in acqmriiig a thorough knowledge of human anatomy, without Avhich you wiUin^ vain attempt to attain to honourable distinction in any branch of yom' profession. I would have every student to commence dissec- tion within six weeks of the commencement of his studies; and, if possible, so to arrange the time of his second, third, and fom-th years, that daily, throughout the entire ])eriod, he may spend two hours (and, if 'possible^ two continuous liom-s) in the cUsseptnig- room. In after years you will have extensive opportmnties of furtheriiig your knowledge of much of what you have come here to learn; hnt it is very improbable that many of you \^■ill have the leism-e, and still fewer the opportvmity of acquiring that knmvledge of anatomy which is so all-important to you, and which is to be acquired in the dissecting-room, and there only. Perhaps yom- ambition does not point to surgery as yom- field of action, and you think that therefore it is not so essential that you should be a thorough anatomist. I shall say a word presently on the exclusn-e practice, of surgerv and the other branches of medicme; but let nie assm-e you, that, superficially acquainted with anatomy, you will prove but a poor disciple of the healing ai't in any of its depart- ments ; you will practise your profession successfalli/, perluips, as the public call it, but in reahty empirically and without confidence or comfort. , Anatomy is one of the subjects which you must learn fiere, anrt on which you need not bestow very much of yoiu- attention at home. Beware of those elegant manuals, richly supplied witii beautifully executed woodcuts; you will never learn your anatomy from such som-ces. These books have their value as guides at tlie (hssectincr-table, and in refreshing the memory of liim who lias been a dili'Tent dissector, but let them only be used m this way. 1 speak feelingly on the subject; for I well remember the labour it cost me, when a young student, to unlearn in the dissectnig-room much ot yvdiat ha'd given me no small labour to learn at home. I remember a circumstance, which stnick me forcibly at this period of my studies as to the necessity (^f (HliL^ent dissection. A * • t and much esteemed physician of tins city, with whom rood fortune to be intimatelv acquainted, the late i>r. very eminent I had the go