Lectures on inflammation : exhibiting a view of the general doctrines, pathological and practical, of medical surgery / by John Thomson.

  • Thomson, John, 1765-1846.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on inflammation : exhibiting a view of the general doctrines, pathological and practical, of medical surgery / by John Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    18/542
    medical instruction, the young practitioner, when he first enters upon the practice of his profession, can supply the want of personal experience, only by the lessons which he obtains from the errors and mistakes he commits, at the hazard or even to the detriment of his patients. An arrangement of medical practitioners according to seniority, or implied experience, has long been advanta- geously followed in the practice of the army and navy, and accordingly a general acquaintance with all the branches of practical medicine is very properly required of those who are educated for these two departments of the public service. Without this general knowledge, they would be totally unfit for the ordinary medical practice of the army and navy. In these departments the distinction between physician and surgeon, though occasionally recognized in name and in particular duty, has never been rigidly carried into effect; for in the army and navy, of this as well as of every other country with which I am acquainted, the surgeons, together with their assistants or mates, have been the physicians in ordinary, as well as the apothecaries also, of the men whose health and lives are intrusted to their care. Since, therefore, in the ordinary and general practice of medicine, physic never has been nor ever can be separated from surgery, it seems but reasonable that those who, from the nature of their profession, and from the circumstances of the situations in which they may be placed, must practise physic and surgery together, should learn equally the rudi- ments of both arts. These arts have had the same origin, and they have the same end. The human body is the sphere of their exertions, and whatever can effect it, in matter, vi- tality, or mind, is the object of their researches. It will not, I hope, be conceived, from the earnestness with which I have recommended the study of physic and surgery in common, that I am disposed to deny the great and pecu- liar advantages which society derives from the subdivision of labour in the medical profession. The effects of this sub- division in improving individual skill in the medical as well as other professions, wherever the state of society is such as to admit of it, is too obvious to be made the subject of any dispute. But the sum of what 1 wish to contend for is, that those who are destined for ihe exercise of the medi- cal profession, by whatever name denominated, whether physician, surgeon, or apothecary, should all receive the