An address upon laying the foundation-stone of the Queen's Hospital, Birmingham, June 18, 1840 / by Vaughan Thomas.

  • Thomas, Vaughan, 1775-1858.
Date:
[1840], [©1840]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address upon laying the foundation-stone of the Queen's Hospital, Birmingham, June 18, 1840 / by Vaughan Thomas. 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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    them subservient to any other purpose whatever than those of curinff the sick, and liealing the various mischiefs and maladies of persons suftering from accident or disease; nothing of a didactic, nothing of an educational, character Avas impressed upon any one department of their ministrations; nothing said about the admission of pupils, their attendance, conduct, pay- ments, instructors. And I believo that the like silence continued to reign over the Rules of most Provincial Infirmaries, till the Regulations of the College of Surgeons and Company of Apothe- caries imposed a sort of necessity upon their Governors to attend a little more to Professional Education, and make their institutions available to the charitable uses, and national benefits, of practical instruction in Medicine and Surgery. They then drew up Rules and Orders upon the subject. I impute not these omissions to the worthy, the charitable, the munificent of those early days as personal faults; they are stated simply as facts; if they are to bear a harsher name, I would call them, not the faults of individuals, but of the age in which they lived; for some of them lived in days of darkness, and some of twilight, as to the great truths, that Pathology must be studied like other natural sciences, under the guidance of facts and phasnomena; that inductive Philosophy, in this as in other applications of its power, demands instances and examples ; that no safe or sure progress can be made in conducting the studies of the novice, or in completing those of the proficient, without the inspection and explanation of cases, without the power of referring to the dififerent sorts of accidental or constitutional, of structural or functional mischief, as instanced in the sufi^erings of individuals; and where are these to be found in such contiguity to each other, in such variety and abundance, and under such diversities of internal or external character, as on the beds of an Hospital ? But to these incontestible ti-uths, and to these wants of Professional life; to the obvious interests of the public, and to the duties of Charity in the dispensation of this necessary knowledge, Founders, Trustees, Governors of Hospitals, do not in early times appear to have paid any attention. In tracing the history of human opinion upon this subject, we might naturally expect to find something to indicate care or concern about it in some of those powerful appeals on the behalf of St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's, and the other Royal Hospitals, which have been made by the ablest of our divines during the last 280 years ; we might expect to find parts or passages which might serve as proofs, that whilst these pious and powerful advocates of Charity took care to set fortli its functions, and enforce its duties, in their relations to bodily sufferings, their relief and cure, they did not altogether overlook those other forms and afiinities of good-will to man, which are to be evidenced by provisions for the instruction of the young in the art and science of healing, by an attendance upon Hospital practice. It is well known, that Archbishop Seeker was in early