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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    cation of our School, and the appointment of teachers from the surrouuding States, it has been our aim to shadow forth this common sense principle—a determination to avail ourselves of all advantages, both local and general, that can strengthen our cause and inspire confidence in our judgment. We hope to con- vince students that we possess both an out-door, as well as an in-door ability to do the honors of a School adroitly. We wish to impress our classes with a feeling of respect not only for our abilities as teachers, but for our skill also as trustees, pilots, or engineers in steering our new and strange craft majestically among the rapids of the Mississippi waters, and amid the gusts and flaws of these Medical latitudes. To proceed, then: Our location is at a noted point; is some two hundred miles from any Medical School; is central for the students of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri, and of easy access. We count but little upon students from Missouri at present, it is true; but by and by, when it shall become disseminated through that State that there is a School conve- nient just above her northern boundary, where instruction is one-third cheaper, and equally good as at St. Louis; where board is one-half cheaper and equally good, and two or three dollars fare on board steamboat will take a student there; we shall expect, if there be any truth in Dr. Adam Smith's or M. Say's principles of political economy, a very respectable pa- tronage from that State. We calculate but little, for the present, upon students from Indiana and Michigan; but anon, when we shall be in connexion by rail road, and the transit across shall be made in a few hours, and at an expense of only a few dollars, we shall expect numbers annually from those States, and farther East, to attend their last course, at least, and graduate with us, in view of seeking a location for practice in the progressive wave of population westwardly. Rock Island is the natural * cross-roads', in the upper valley, so declared by its geographical position as well as by the topo- graphical formation of the country; and to this point and Davenport opposite the established mail routes converge. It is the point looked to as the terminus of a railroad from the East which is to.divert the commerce of the Mississippi from as far down as the head of the lower rapids, and even from the rich valley of the Des Moines river, to this place; and should the grand conception of pushing such road onward still