Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Town-Council : in reference to the vacant Chair of Materia Medica in the University of Edinburgh [and to Robert Christison's application for the post] / [Robert Liston].

  • Liston, Robert, 1794-1847.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Town-Council : in reference to the vacant Chair of Materia Medica in the University of Edinburgh [and to Robert Christison's application for the post] / [Robert Liston]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    testimonials of zeal, talent, great mental powers, and scientific acquirements; he may even be a successful author, and yet he may be found upon trial to be a miserable teacher. He may have been a highly popular teacher of Mathematics, Materia Medica, or Medical Jurisprudence, and yet may prove an unpopular, and therefore unsuccessful teacher of Natural Philosophy, Practice of Physic, or Materia Medica, as has already happened in your University. You must be aware that I could, on the other hand, give instances of some of the most useful and successful teachers, and whom you would not change for any others that Europe could afford, who have never distinguished themselves by writing a line, or making one important discovery. It may be supposed to be a great hardship upon the present Professor of Medical Jurisprudence, who has distinguished himself above all other men in this country in that department, and whose talents and honourable sentiments are worthy of the highest commendation, that his translation to a more lu¬ crative chair should be objected to, but you must keep in view the interests of the public at large, and not those of any individual. You must ask yourselves whether it will not be more serviceable to the fame of the University to retain his services in the present chair, to master the diffi¬ culties of which lie has devoted so many of Jhe best years of his life, than to remove him elsewhere ; and whether the previous melancholy failures of equally talented men are not sufficient to deter you from making any such expe¬ riment? The friends of the professor will naturally en¬ deavour to persuade you to cater for his pecuniary interests; but although the Materia Medica chair is at present higher in pecuniary emolument, yet you have it in your power at any time to make the one chair as valuable in a pecuniary point of view as the other, by doing, with respect to graduates, what the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, the Uni-