An introductory address delivered in the theatre of the Middlesex Hospital Medical College, October 3, 1870, at the opening of the winter session / by Wm. Cayley.

  • Cayley, W. (William), 1836-1916.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introductory address delivered in the theatre of the Middlesex Hospital Medical College, October 3, 1870, at the opening of the winter session / by Wm. Cayley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Soon you are called upon to take part yourselves in the practical work of the hospital, as clerks and dressers, first to the out-, then to the in-patients; you will acquire skill in the innumerable technicalities of our art, you will learn the use of all those instruments and appliances by which our means of diagnosis and treatment are rendered every day more and more precise and certain, the stethoscope, the ophthalmoscope, the laryngoscope, the microscope, the thermometer, together with all the simpler surgical manipulations, and at the same time your knowledge will be rendered accurate and systematic by having to keep records of all the cases treated in the hospital. Then, after filling these more subordinate posts, you will have the opportunity of taking the higher and more respon¬ sible oliices of resident clinical assistant and house surgeon, in which you will be admitted to a more important share in the treatment of injuries and diseases. And thus when you begin practice on your own ac¬ count, you will be no mere novices furnished only with theoretical knowledge, and having still the most impor¬ tant parts of your profession to learn under disadvan¬ tageous circumstances, but will be thoroughly grounded in practice as well as theory, and well qualified to enter with credit on your professional career. Let me then urge you to neglect no opportunity of taking these offices, and it is one advantage of a small school like ours which may well counterbalance many dis¬ advantages, that no student who may desire it will find any difficulty in obtaining them, and I do not hesitate to say that one such office, even the lowest, the duties of which have been faithfully and punctually discharged, would be well worth all that array of splendidly bound books which I see waiting on the table to reward pro¬ ficiency in the different classes of the past session. There is yet one question connected with your studies which perhaps ought not to be passed over in silence, it is; one indeed to which much more importance is often attached than it in reality deserves, and which is liable to
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