The anatomy and physiology of the human body / by John and Charles Bell.

  • Bell, John, 1763-1820.
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The anatomy and physiology of the human body / by John and Charles Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.

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    our profession needs to learn, this is, perhaps, the first, — that he should resist the fascinations of doctrines and hypotheses, till he have won the privilege of such studies by honest labour, and a faithful pursuit of real and useful knowledge. Of this knowledge, anatomy surely forms the greatest share. Anatomy, even while it is neglected, is universally acknowledged to be the very basis of all medical skill. It is by anatomy that the physician guesses at the seat, or causes, or consequences, of any internal disease: without anatomy, the surgeon could not move one step in his great operations; and those theories could not even be conceived, which so often usurp the place of that very science, from which they should flow as probabilities and conjectures only, drawn from its store of facts. A consciousness of the high value of anatomical knowledge never entirely leaves the mind of the stu- dent. He begins with a strong conviction that this is the great study, and with an ardent desire to master all its difficulties: if he relaxes in the pursuit, it is from the difficulties of the task, and the seduction of theories too little dependent on anatomy, and too easily acces- sible without its help. His desire for real knowledge revives, only when the opportunity is lost j when he is to leave the schools of medicine; when he is to give an account of his studies, with an anxious and oppressed mind, conscious of his ignorance in that branch which is to be received as the chief test of his professional skill; or when, perhaps, he feels a more serious and manly impression, the difficulty and importance of that art which he is called to practise. Yet, in spite of feeling and reason, the student en- courages in himself a taste for speculations and theories, the idle amusements of the day, which, even in his own short course of study, he may observe sinking in quick succession into neglect and oblivion, never to revive; he aspires to the character of a physiologist, to which want of experience and a youthful fancy have assigned a rank and importance which it does not hold in the estimation of those who should best know its weak- jiess or strength. The rawest student, proud of his physiological knowledge, boasts of a science and a name