On self-training by the medical student : the introductory lecture, delivered in University College at the commencement of the medical session, 1856-1857 / by E.A. Parkes.

  • Parkes, Edmund A. (Edmund Alexander), 1819-1876.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On self-training by the medical student : the introductory lecture, delivered in University College at the commencement of the medical session, 1856-1857 / by E.A. Parkes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    come when parents will deliberate on the pro- fession their sons are to follow, not merely in the light of a profitable investment of capital, of a trade which is to bring in worldly wealth, but as a training which is to teach what is “ better than rubies, yea, than fine gold”—integrity, temperance, charity, and honour. For the last two years, the English people have heen thrilled with admiration at the actions of that noble army which, like the Koman legions of old, has turned back from the fertile plains of Thrace the fierce soldiers of the North. Can, indeed, any picture of human endurance, of human heroism, be more vivid, more startling, more wonderful, than that which the pen of genius has drawn of the deeds and woes of the armies before Sebastopol ? Does it not read like a tale of romance, that history of those wan and wretched men, half-clothed, unfed, shivering beneath the icy blasts of that inclement sky, drenched by the snow-drifts from the icy steppes, exposed to storms of shell and shot, which were only surpassed in destructiveness by the fiercer wrath of heaven, dying in masses, or hopelesssly anticipating death, does it not, I say, seem like a romance, that these men, day after day, formed their parades, cleaned their arms, prepared for conflict, wrapped their tattered and soaking blankets round them, and without one murmur or one regret, passed across that dread ravine, so