Introductory lecture delivered at the commencement of the fourth session of the Medical College of South Carolina, November 1827 / by Samuel Henry Dickson.

  • Dickson, Samuel Henry, 1798-1872.
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory lecture delivered at the commencement of the fourth session of the Medical College of South Carolina, November 1827 / by Samuel Henry Dickson. 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.)

    5/26
    r THE pleasure, gentlemen, with which I welcome you within our College, and resume the seat from which I am accustomed to address you, is of necessity tempered by se- rious reflection upon the nature and importance of the du- ties which are here incumbent on me. it is to be supposed that you have considered deeply and deliberately the sub- jects of our future discussions ;—that you are fully aware of the nature and variety of the objects comprised in the study of Medical Science. In proportion to the power which in- dividuals are called to exercise over their fellow men is their responsibility; and in no situation in life is such an extent of power given into the hands of human beings as belongs to the profession among whose members you have enlisted yourselves. To you are hereafter to be committed the avenues of life ; to you are to be entrusted the public and private safety. You are to direct the fostering attentions which must ripen the tender nursling into the hardy man.— You are to point out to anxious parents the mode in which their children are to be made to realize their hopes, and to enable them to shun the dangers which surround and me- nace them with destruction. You are to direct the physical, and in no little measure the moral and intellectual education of the youth of our country To you she is to be thus in- debted for the robustness and hardihood of her soldiers and her labourers, the nerve and muscle of the body politic.— The more intellectual portions of society are to be especi- ally subjects of your future care—for literary and scientific