Valedictory address to the graduating class at the fifty-second commencement of Castleton Medical College / by S. G. Perkins.
- Perkins, S. G. (Selah Gridley), 1829-1862
- Date:
- 1855
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Valedictory address to the graduating class at the fifty-second commencement of Castleton Medical College / by S. G. Perkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![birth, and contracted and misshapen by adversity, and dark- ened and hindered by the ignorance of its very votaries, shall we find the infant child of a new truth, whose ripened manhood is to bless oar race. We shall have need of much toleration, of much kind and tender helpfulness, if we would see the red, pulpy and besmeared infant grow beyond his helpless and inar- ticulate wailings, to a clear, self-sustained beauty and useful- ness. We cannot put by the duty which the age has laid on us, as a profession. We are its Scholars: its forerunners in the path it most delights to travel—that of Positive Science. We shall, as individuals and as a profession, fall behind the main body of this great advancing army of humanity, and become obsolete, unless we will fulfill our mission with cheerful alacri- ty, and be ready to discover, and adopt new appliances to its growing needs. There is no need of our leaving our path in search of novelties. If the great laws of Humanity irradiate our eyes will be clear and all external nature will shine with intelligence. Every phenomenon of her varied life will become a mystic Hieroglyph, replete with significance, and we shall carry with ourselves the key, wherewith to unlock the hidden meaning. The varying forms of disease, the changeful beauty of Health, the motions of animals, and the thousandfold chem- istries and Dynamics of inanimate nature will become hints and helpers. We must not forget that our life is bifold, and that the two extremes of learner and doer ;—of student and practitioner are needed to make up the full compliment of the perfect man.— Hitherto we have sat on the forms of instruction mainly ; that we might learn the first simplest sums of the alphabet of na- ture, which our elder brothers have now with such pains de* ciphered. The meaning and true intent as well as the sep- arate items of a true Natural History arc yet as far from us, as was complete Egyptian History from the first decipher- er of the Rosetta stone. The sum of our present knowledge is extremely limited when compared with the infinite variety of nature and the infinite needs of man. One of our greatest Philosophers has compared himself to a child ]licking up shells](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21147012_0012.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
