An inaugural lecture on botany, considered as a science, and as a branch of medical education / [Edward Forbes].

  • Edward Forbes
Date:
[1843]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inaugural lecture on botany, considered as a science, and as a branch of medical education / [Edward Forbes]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/28 page 10
    and in the cabinet of the naturalist: its first element, correct observation, leading to correct diagnosis; the second, accurate discrimination, leading to sound methods of treatment in the one case and philosophical views of affinity in the other. It may be objected, that the student had much better learn all this at the bed-side than among fields and flowers. To this I would answer, that no training is so strengthening as that which separates the process from the object of the pro¬ cess. I believe the confounding of the two has been a great evil in medical education. It leads to habits of loose reason¬ ing, and blunts the most valuable power of detecting fallacies. Too many professional works notoriously abound in bad logic resulting from such confusion. May we not remedy this defect by making the scientific branches of medical study—the col¬ lateral sciences as they are termed—means of educating the mind of the student, so as to enable him to enter on his prac¬ tice with a truer eye and sounder judgement ? It is well known that medical men who have had the benefit of a good scho¬ lastic education previous to the commencement of their pro¬ fessional studies enter upon the latter doubly armed, and throughout life often maintain their superiority over their brethren equal or even superior in natural talent, though wanting the benefit of such training. May we not remedy the defect in the case of the latter, and specialize the superi¬ ority of the former by means of the mental exercise afforded by the study of natural history ? I do not mean that men should be made naturalists before entering on their medical studies, but that the practical and more abstract branches of the medical curriculum should be pursued equally together, and that, while the acquiring of professional information is a grand object of the student’s pursuits, the training which gives the power to apply that information with precision be not lost sight of, but occupy a prominent place in the division of his time.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3