The introductory address delivered at St. Bartholomew's Hospital on the opening of the medical session, October 1st, 1856 / by Andrew Melville McWhinnie.

  • McWhinnie, Andrew Melville, 1807 or 1808-1866.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The introductory address delivered at St. Bartholomew's Hospital on the opening of the medical session, October 1st, 1856 / by Andrew Melville McWhinnie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    3;C(^n^lIlttlIlCG Wltll tllG GlGHlGIlts of JVCatllGni^jtlCS from tliosG who SGok tliG Diploma of its Eollowsliip. TliG timG will not admit of my ontoring at longtli into all tliG argnmonts that might ho brought for¬ ward in support of my firm conviction, that to cul¬ tivate the art of reasoning, in its largest sense, will he found more valuable than any mere mathematical study, to one who wishes to use his medical and surgical knowledge at the bedside to the best ad¬ vantage ; and, I cannot but think, you will see and acknowledge the truth of this, when you remember that, unlike those who follow in the fixed and undeviating path of Law and Theology, you have to spend your lives in fathoming the deeper opera¬ tions of induction, and deal with the eliminations of chance, and the higher doctrines of probable evidence —departments of scientific ratiocination that no one versed only in geometrical and such-like axioms could ever reach. Above all things, you must never let your minds be deluded into the belief that all propositions must be what are called exact, to de¬ serve the name of scientific propositions. In all cases of complex phenomena which will, in practice, be submitted to your daily observation, you will, perhaps, only be able to recognise tendencies, and be called upon to act on approximate conclusions : still, your deductions, made with the help of rigorous and inductive methods, may approach the highest class of scientific truths. You may have the extent of your power in this direction bounded by your observation, but within this boundary your power is immense. It is a scientific proposition founded on experience, that to delay operating for strangulated