On life and its lessons : being the inaugural address delivered to the Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Society, in the session 1882-83 / by James George Davey.

  • Davey, James George, 1813-1895.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On life and its lessons : being the inaugural address delivered to the Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Society, in the session 1882-83 / by James George Davey. 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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    ON LIFE AND ITS LESSONS. T^HERE is no single class of men to which the annexed advice of a great poet (Pope) is not of importance. Such advice is very especially applicable to the class medical. The pursuits and studies of those in the medical profession carry them so close to the tmknowable, that it is right to remind all such that they will do well to Presume not infinity to scan, but to bear ever in mind that— The proper study of mankind is man. The contents of the following pages will demonstrate how sadly Pope's advice has been to this time neglected by physicians; and with the result of much loss to science—or, what is the same thing, to truth. That mind, pre-occupied with popular fallacies, is in no state to fairly investigate or search for the hard facts of physiology, hence it has come to pass that not a few doctors are seen to commit themselves to opinions in no sense harmonizing with the time—i.e. with this Nineteenth Century. What is merely tra- ditional must be looked on with no little suspicion and mistrust; he who does this is in the right road to cover the many diificulties in tlic path of progress—and to reach that higher platform which is the destiny of man—in possibly a not distant future. The history of biological science will be ever incomplete with no reference to the famous ''Lectures on- Man,^' from the pen of the late Sir William Lawrence, delivered in the early part of this century, at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. These