The connection of chemistry and medicine : address at the opening of the medical classes, Tuesday, October 21st, 1890 / by John Ferguson, M.A., LL.D., F.S.A., Regius Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow.

  • Ferguson, John, 1838-1916.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The connection of chemistry and medicine : address at the opening of the medical classes, Tuesday, October 21st, 1890 / by John Ferguson, M.A., LL.D., F.S.A., Regius Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    will see that the amount he has been able to acquire during his first session is insufficient to enable him to follow with ease and confidence the description of the variety of absolutely new substances contained in man and animals, which constitutes zoochemistry. He has not had time to furnish himself with such a knowledge of the general principles of organic chemistry as will help him through the difficulties of physiological chemistry. The nomenclature, the classification, the reactions and decompositions are all different from those which he has found it hard enough to learn in the first year of his course ; and he goes forward not so well prepared as he ought to be. My conviction, after many years’ observation of the working of the system, is that there ought to be a compulsory senior course—I say nothing about the length of it—a senior course in which the student of medicine should be carried forward to that part of the subject which has a special bearing upon his professional work. I may as well say at once that this would not do as a substitute for the present course, for at the root of all chemistry lies a perfect familiarity with the elements and their compounds, and the various reactions they undergo. Not until that has been learned can any good come of a study of organic chemistry.