Introductory address, delivered at the opening of the session of the Medical College of Georgia : on the second Monday of November, 1838 / by Joseph A. Eve.
- Eve, Joseph A. (Joseph Adams), 1805-1886
- Date:
- 1838
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Introductory address, delivered at the opening of the session of the Medical College of Georgia : on the second Monday of November, 1838 / by Joseph A. Eve. 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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![[19] directed to those departments of medical knowledge, which are demonstrative; however difficult, howcrer uninteresting, or disagreeable they may be to you, they must be mastered before you can understand those that are based upon them-for otherwise, there will be no stability in your opinions, no consistency in your practice,—you will be fluctuating as the waves of the sea, —your system of medicine, like the house of the foolish man built on the sand. As medical philosophers, you must contemplate and study man as an assemblage of organs, performing distinct offices: you must acquaint yourselves intimately with the construction and composition of these organs and their offices in health, with the changes in structure and modifications in action, resulting from disease, and the constituent properties and qualities of the remedial agents that may be brought to act beneficially upon them—the knowledge of these subjects constitutes the sciences, of anatomy healthy and pathological, physiology, chemistry and materia medica: these being elementary and fundamental de- mand primary attention ; I would however by no means have you undervalue the importance of the practical branches which are, indeed, the end and object of medical science. If it be important in every undertaking to commence aright— in every journey to take the path that leads most safely and directly to the point proposed ; it is certainly not the less desira- ble and necessary, that in commencing the study of medicinej you should set out with correct principles—and be assured, Gentlemen, it is only the right conception'and appreciation of tho principles of the inductive philosophy that can conduct you to a thorough knowledge of your profession—these alone that can make you scientific physicans and rational and successful](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21118358_0019.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
