Volume 1

Horae subsecivae / by John Brown.

  • Brown, John, 1810-1882.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Horae subsecivae / by John Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    only point io the objects, and say little else than See here and see there.' This is the great secret, the coming to close quarters with your object, having immediate, not mediate cognisance of the materials of study, appre- hending first, and then doing your best to comprehend. For, to adapt Bacon's illustration, which no one need ever weary of giving or receiving,—a good practical physician is more akin to the working-bee than to the spider or the ant. Instead of spinning, like the schoolmen of old, endless webs of speculation out of their own bowels, in which they were themselves afterwards as frequently caught and destroyed as any one else, or hoarding up, grain after grain, the knoAv- ledge of other men, and thus becoming 'a very dungeon of learning,' in which {Hiiernict) they lose at once themselves and their aim—they should rather be like the brisk and pubUc-hearted bee, who, by divine instinct, her own industry, and the accuracy of her instrument, gathers honey from all flowers. ' For- mica colligit et utitur, ut faciunt empirici; aranea ex se fila educit neque a particularibus materiam petit; apis denique caeteris se melius gerit, haec indigesta a floribus mella colligit, deinde in viscerum cellulas concocta maturat, iisdem tandem insudat donee ad integram perfectionem perduxerit' We had intended giving some account of the bear ing that the general enlightenment of the community