An address delivered in the theatre of the Meath Hospital, at the opening of the session of 1847-48 / by William Stokes.

  • William Stokes
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address delivered in the theatre of the Meath Hospital, at the opening of the session of 1847-48 / by William Stokes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    But I can only allude to these points here. They have their interest, however, as bearing on the value and reputation of the Irish School of Medicine. In Dublin, what with the occurrence of greater and minor epidemics, and the almost constant existence of fever in and about the metropolis, the medical student has long possessed the opportunity of studying that fell disease, which, no matter where he may be placed in after life, must occupy a large portion of his time and anxious care. In the public medical service,—in the army and the navy,—in the colonies,—he will meet with fever, to say nothing of its prevalence through the length and breadth of Ireland, and in the commercial cities of Great Britain. And if he learned nothing but to accustom himself to stand in its presence, to overcome by habit that physical fear which more or less acts on all men when first in the presence of an enemy, he would, do much towards augmenting his future usefulness. But the clinical study of fever has, in some re- spects, peculiar advantages. If you have any doubts of the value of the Science you are to profess, come to the wards of a fever hospital, and you will see there the greatest triumphs of art; you will see the old maxims of Hippocratic medicine, expanded and im- proved, though not altered, by modern discovery, suc- cessfully applied to the direct, almost immediate saving of life; you will see cases where every function of the body is widely and wildly astray, where every organ is oppressed, where the blood is dissolved and nearly life- less, and the whole frame hastening to putridity and
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