Exposition of the conduct and character of Dr. John Augustine Smith : president of the Coll. of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New-York, and professor of physiology : as exhibited in the session of 1839-40 / by James R. Manley.

  • Manley, James R., 1781-1851.
Date:
1841
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Exposition of the conduct and character of Dr. John Augustine Smith : president of the Coll. of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New-York, and professor of physiology : as exhibited in the session of 1839-40 / by James R. Manley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    maxim, que inter medendum conveniat silere, sine gram causa non vulgaturum, although unfortunately more honored in the breach than in the observance, I most implicitly subscribe, and I do not think that my conduct, on the present occasion, presents an exception, since the gravis causa is obvious. It would be desirable that all recollection of what has happened should be forgotten, but however desirable, it is confessedly difficult, for the memory acknowledges no master; our recollections are independent of our will, and cannot be controlled by it. I would forget it, like a summer day storm, which however furious and appalling in the onset, has passed by, and its fertilizing influences more than compensated for the disaster it occa- sioned. I have one thing more, however, to ask of you, gentlemen, and it is, that you will not permit, so far as you are concerned^ any, the least dissention, to arise in this College on my account. I shall proceed in my course as if nothing had occurred, and conduct it, I tiust, to a satisfactory termination. It seems, however, that my appeal to my class offended Dr. Smith's sense of propriety, since he charged it as an offence against all good order, and endeavored to show from this fact, that I was an improper man for a professor, since, if I had cause of complaint, the application for redress ought to have been made to the trustees, and not to the class. There would have been some Wright in this remark, but for the contempt which he manifested for his own argument, by publicly re. peating to the students what he had said to the trusties, with the wicked addition that they, the trustees agreed with him in opinion* The next material fact relating to his agency occurred on the evening of Friday, the last day of February, and the last day of the course, when he convened the professors in order, as he said, to take their opinions of my qualifications. At this meeting, which was as unauthorized as it was unprecedented, (and so stated by one of their number as soon as he was made acquainted with the business,) all present except himself concurred in the belief that I was the best qualified candidate for the chair of obstetrics whom they knew, who had not been heretofore a public lecturer; but at the same time Dr. Watts, the professor of anatomy, proposed his friend Dr. Bartlett for the place of lecturer, and spoke of him as every way qualified, having been long accustomed to public teaching, and formerly associated with him in one of our provincial medical schools. This announcement * As soon as Dr. S. found that his conduct had produced some excitement among the students, he took occasion to say to them, that in the college he stood in two relations : that he was the president of the college, as well as the professor of physiology, and that it was in the capacity of president that he had considered it to be his duty to state his opinion of my course of instruction to the trustees, and that they agreed with him in opinion; but whether as to his duty, or the fact he an- nounced, is doubtful, and at best immaterial, as in neither sense was it true, as the sequel will show.