Volume 2

The profession of medicine, its study, and practice; its duties, and rewards : An address delivered at Saint Bartholomew's Hospital on the opening of the medical session of 1850-51 / by Charles West.

  • West, Charles, 1816-1898.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The profession of medicine, its study, and practice; its duties, and rewards : An address delivered at Saint Bartholomew's Hospital on the opening of the medical session of 1850-51 / by Charles West. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    8/32 (page 8)
    missing in great measure of its uses. To some the subjects so attractive at a distance grow less interesting when looked on near at hand ; their difficulty dis¬ courages, their number distracts, the less persevering student. He does not seek to conquer the obstacles he meets with by redoubled energy, but he finds out a much easier way,—to evade them. He decides that knowledge, first of one subject, and then of another, is superfluous and unpractical; and (his indolence playing tricks with his intellect) he shapes out for himself, almost unconsciously, a course of study, if so it can be called, from which he has eliminated what¬ ever can distinguish our art from a mere handicraft, or add beauty or dignity to his own character ; and thus becomes at last that wildest of all theorists, that most inconclusive of all reasoners, most incompetent of all observers, the so-called practical man. Another errs in a way more entitled to respect, but little less inju¬ rious to his usefulness. He devotes his time almost exclusively to some one subject, and, learning of others but little more than enough to pass the necessary ordeals, he leaves the scene of his studies a good ana¬ tomist, an excellent botanist, or an expert chemist,— but an unskilful doctor. He has learned much that is good, much that is worth the knowing ; but he has not learned what he came to such a place as this to learn ; not what he professes to have learned when he settles down in practice, and promises ease to the suffering, health to the diseased. A third may man¬ fully encounter each difficulty, and go on laboriously amassing facts, but not estimating their value, or de-