An address delivered at the opening of the Rock Island Medical School : November 7, 1848 / by M.L. Knapp.

  • Knapp, M. L. (Moses L.), 1799-1879.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address delivered at the opening of the Rock Island Medical School : November 7, 1848 / by M.L. Knapp. 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.)

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    cannot these be had, and collected, by the well directed efforts of seven or eight adventurous spirits, whose reputation, hopes, pride, interests, are all involved in the success of their enter- prize ? This is our case exactly ; and here we are before you —some of us yet in our youth, almost, quick with impulse, big with ambitious hopes; others in the noon-day of life, calm, confident, capable of great endurance in the carrying out of hio-h resolves ; and yet again others whose temples begin to be frosted with age, who have turned the meridian of life, and who, at times, begin to feel an ebbing interest in human affairs ; but, rallying on the instant, stirred by the Divinity that is within us, and relying on the experience of years to have im- pressed on us the necessity of doing the stern duties of life to the end, till it shall please Heaven to call us to a nobler sphere, acting from principle, manfully resolve to fight on in the path of duty, fight ever, cheered and fortified by the consciousness of our integrity, of being actuated by good motives, and of having a high and noble aim—and in summing up, in a word, the measure of our united, deep, and abiding determination to carry our object, we here pledge to it, our lives, our FORTUNES, AND OUR SACRED HONOR. (See KoteQ>.) A few words in conclusion, Gentlemen, and I have done. New schools are looked upon with a jealous eye, and their projectors are frequently made the target at which 'bad eggs' from other schools are hurled. I have some reputation this way—am a new-schoolsman—have assisted in getting up several—was a private pupil of the late lamented Mc- Clbllan who got up Jefferson College and sundry other medical schools in Philadelphia, and who was abused and vilified, and conspired against by his envious rivals, some of the very men, we opine, who now enjoy the fruits of his labors. I have had early lessons, and have had late lessons, and only wish I were indeed a more worthy pupil of so worthy a master. WhatI wish to say is, to defineour position— declare our bill of rights. We hold it to be essentially our inherent and unalienable right to do just as we please—to get up a school on Rock Island or on Nantucket Island-on the Rocky mountains or in the city of Gotham, or at any place between— among our neighbors the Flat Heads, or among the high-heads whose facial angle comes up to the standard of our own—and