Letter addressed to the Right Honourable the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council of Edinburgh, regarding the institutions of medicine / [Peter Reid].

  • Reid, Peter, 1777-1838.
Date:
[1821]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter addressed to the Right Honourable the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council of Edinburgh, regarding the institutions of medicine / [Peter Reid]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fessional subjects, is unquestionably a Chair of the very highest importance, and one upon which the character of the Medical School of this place essentially depends. It is in a great measure according as this class is taught, that medicine is either exalted to the character of a liberal science, or debased to that of a low routine art. It serves more than any other to fix the standard of profes¬ sional excellence, and to give that tone to the student’s mind, which, as it is well or ill direct¬ ed, delivers the health of the community into the hands of men liberally bred, or of trading quacks. Indeed this school, when it ceases to stand pre-eminent for imparting something in¬ tellectual to medicine, and teaching its princi¬ ples on the broad grounds of a liberal science, must soon fall into contempt, and the profession must partake of the degradation; for without this alliance, as Burke has justly observed, there is something illiberal sticks to all the arts. I come now, Gentlemen, to the most awk¬ ward part of this letter, that is, to state my claims to the Institutions of Medicine, should a vacancy occur in that Chair. I am just as well aware as any of you, of the ridicule at¬ tached to a statement, the purport of which implies the puff direct or indirect at every word; but without affecting more humility than my neighbours, I take the liberty of mention¬ ing the following facts.