Volume 1

An introduction to medical literature, including a system of practical nosology, intended as a guide to students, and an assistant to practitioners. Together with detached essays on the study of physic, on classification, on chemical affinities, on animal chemistry, on the blood, on the medical effects of climates, on the circulation, and on palpitation. / By Thomas Young.

  • Young, Thomas, 1773-1829.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to medical literature, including a system of practical nosology, intended as a guide to students, and an assistant to practitioners. Together with detached essays on the study of physic, on classification, on chemical affinities, on animal chemistry, on the blood, on the medical effects of climates, on the circulation, and on palpitation. / By Thomas Young. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    education asserts, that he has literally ‘¢ known a physician above fifty years of age objected to for his youth.” In provincial situations, the want of competition will frequently lead to a much earlier practice; but in a metropolis, it is indispensably necessary, that a physician should be prepared, whatever his abilities may be, to pass at least ten years after his first establishment without the slightest emolument from his profession ; and he may think himself singularly fortunate if, at the expiration of this period, he is enabled to derive a competent subsistence from it. In the mean time he must have sufficient resolution to resist the many allurements which will present themselves, to divert him from the exclusive pursuit of the profession which he has chosen, unless he should find them so powerful, as to induce him in any degree to sacrifice his views in physic to other consider- ations. The public is inclined to think, and not without something like reason, that the abilities of different indivi- duals are pretty. nearly equal; and that if any one has acquired distinguished excellence in a particular department of study, he must have bestowed so much the less time and attention on other departments: of course if he excelled in more than one line out of his profession, the natural inference would be so much the stronger: and whether this may be fair or not, it is at least fair that direct evidence should be produced or imagined, of a devotion to medical pursuits, before medical confidence can reasonably be expected. Hence it becomes obviously desirable to a young physician’ to obtain some public appointment, which may ensure him a certain degree of practice, and which may proclaim to the world that he cannot be wholly inexperienced. An army physician has often a considerable advantage, in acquiring