An address to medical and surgical pupils, on the studies and duties of their profession; to which is appended, a case of caesarean operation / by James Barlow.

  • Barlow, James.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address to medical and surgical pupils, on the studies and duties of their profession; to which is appended, a case of caesarean operation / by James Barlow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    attention or study which, they respectively demand. It is, doubtless, most desirable that the general education of a student should end when his professional education commences. It may appear, at first sight, to the juvenile student, by no means difficult to form a general idea of the object in view in the study of Medicine; —it is manifestly, he will say, the prevention and cure of disease; or, since disease is a deviation from a certain condition of the body which we call health, we may define our object to be the preservation of health. But what does this imply?—a knowledge of the conditions of health, or what is equivalent, of the conditions of life. These are, in the first place, a certain structure or arrangement of the parts of the animal body, which we call organization; in the second, a certain determinate relation to this organized body of the external agents which surround it. Of these two elements, as it were, of our study, the organized body on the one hand, and the external agents on the other, the one appears to be sufficient, how vague the other! What may not be comprehended under the influence of external agents ? The very ground on which we tread, the air we breathe, the materials which minister to our sustenance, the light which cheers us, the warmth which vivifies us, that mysterious agent Electricity, which exerts its unseen, ill understood, yet unquestionably powerful influence