Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: [Prospectuses, 1864/5 to 1883/4]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.
23/564 (page 13)
![1:] Vv-li:it }'0U are to see in practice. But ;i student will have to wait very long if lie is to wait till he can, in any fair sense of the word, understand what he sees when he begins to work in a hospital. Much of our first learning consists in learning to know tilings by sight and by other senses, before any considera- tion of whether we understand them: and much of technical language and of mere routine miist be leamt, which any one may leani, whether he can understand them or not; and many things may be learnt and remembered which we may afterwards come to understand. And besides all this, there is in practical medicine and surgery a great deal of knowledge which cannot yet be, in any proper sense, understood; that is, whi-ch cannot be reduced to principles or connected with any laws of physiology or other parts of medical science. Yet it is real knowledge, true and very useful: and it can be gained only in the study of actual disease and its remedies; and there is so much of it that in all the time you can spare, through the whole period of youi- pupilage, you will not be able to learn it all. But learn all you can of it: for it is eminently the kind of knowledge which is useful in practice, and of which as yeai's pass on more and more will be incorporated in the true science of medicine. In thus commending practical study, do not let me seem to depreciate the other subjects that will be p\it before you, and in which you have to leai-n the principles and the doctrine of your profession. I do not advise you to study practice to the exclusion of these things, but to study it with them and with their help. Whatever else you may be doing let some measure of practical study be interwoven with every day's work. I have said that I cannot assign its due value to each of the subjects in your cuniculum: but all have some value; and of some, especially of anatomy and physiology, a considerable knowledge is indispensable, I will not say to safe practice, but to intelligent and improving practice. It is not only that they supply fVicts which may be of daily practical value, and that in them alone we can learn the standards of structure and vital process with which we nnist compare all that we observe in disease, and to which we must endeavour to restore whatever lias been ddlectod from thorn : it Ih not for these uses alone tliat](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21507326_0023.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
