Medical study : an introductory address ... / [John Addington Symonds].

  • John Addington Symonds
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical study : an introductory address ... / [John Addington Symonds]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    your minds to consider your profession your prime object. The studies belonging to it are not such as you can take up or lay down at pleasure, or very profitably interweave with other pursuits. It must be at once a mean and an end. Every thing else must be secondary; and not only secondary, but ac¬ cessory; it must absorb other pursuits; therefore, let these be such as will add to its support and nutri¬ ment. Other magi may, for a time, exhibit their feats before your intellect; but the rod of Esculapius must swallow up all the others. You must not sup¬ pose that your education can ever be finished; that there is a certain amount of knowledge which you have only to get into your possession; and that then you will be prepared for all exigencies, and at liberty to direct your thoughts to any subject that may at¬ tract you. No; while you are suitors of medicine, there is no time when you can slacken your addresses or abate your devotion ; and if you trifle with other favourites, you incur a risk of being discarded alto¬ gether from your lawful mistress. There is no virtue, the exercise of which, during medical study, is more likely to bring its own re¬ ward, than patience. You will at first, perhaps, meet with discouragement; the investigations may seem sterile and only fitted to embarrass and be¬ wilder the intellect, instead of leading to any definite and useful result. But hold on your way cheerfully and forbearingly, and you will soon find light arise out of darkness, and order out of chaos. Nor ought I, when enumerating the dispositions
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