Volume 2

The profession of medicine, its study, and practice; its duties, and rewards : An address delivered at Saint Bartholomew's Hospital on the opening of the medical session of 1850-51 / by Charles West.

  • West, Charles, 1816-1898.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The profession of medicine, its study, and practice; its duties, and rewards : An address delivered at Saint Bartholomew's Hospital on the opening of the medical session of 1850-51 / by Charles West. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1] tomists,—but that you should know how the archetypal forms of various animals are but slightly different expressions of the same idea,—all pointing to a unity of design, which runs throughout the whole: nor chemists,-—but yet that you should be aware that within the body, as without, the same great laws which govern inorganic nature still obtain ; but modified, and made subservient to the support of life, and to the mainte¬ nance of health. It is the possession of knowledge such as this which marks the difference between the man who follows his profession in the spirit of a philosopher, and him who pursues it as a handicraft, limiting his endeavours to the acquisition of just that kind and amount of know¬ ledge for which there will be most demand in the duties of every-day life. The latter, indeed, if for a moment he raises his thoughts beyond this narrow circle, looks out upon irreconcilable difficulties and contradictions; but the same things which seem to him to “ clash and interfere,” are discerned by the former to be all “ concentrick and harmonious;” full of that wisdom with which “ God, the divine Har- mostes, has ordered them in such tunable and methodi¬ cal proportions.” If life were long enough for their pursuit, or the majority of intellects sufficiently powerful to grasp the details of all these collateral sciences, and then to bring the knowledge thus acquired to bear upon the subjects of your special studies, the more you learned of them the better. But the labours of ages which