On mental training and relaxation in the study of medicine.

  • Brown, John.
Date:
[1851]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On mental training and relaxation in the study of medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    they are not below the average in intelligence ; they may be defi- cient qua medici, and yet, if taken in time, may make excellent men in many other useful and honourable callings. But suppose we have got the requisite amount and specific kind of capacity, how are we to fill it with its means: how are we to make it effectual for its end ? On this point we say nothing, except that the fear now a-days, is rather that the mind gets too much and too many things, than too little or too few. But this means of turning knowledge to action, making it what Bacon meant when he said it was power, invigorating the thinking substance, of giving tone, and you may call it muscle and nerve, blood and bone, to the mind—a firm gripe and a keen and sure eye: that, we think, is far too little considered or cared for at present, as if the mere act of filling in everything for ever into a poor lad’s brain, would give him the ability to make anything of it, and above all the power to ap- propriate the small portions of true nutriment, and reject the dregs. One comfort we have, that in the main, and in the last resort, there is really very little that can be done for any man by another. Begin with the sense and the genius—the keen appetite and the good digestion—and, amid all obstacles and hardships, the work goes on merrily and well; without these, we all know what a labo- rious affair, and a dismal, it is to make an incapable youth apply. Did any of you ever set yourselves to keep up artificial respiration, or to trudge about for a whole night with a soporised victim of opium, or transfuse blood (your own perhaps) into a poor, fainting, exanimate wretch? If so, you will have some idea of the heartless labour, and its generally vain and miserable result, to make a dull student apprehend—a debauched one interested, knowing, or active in anything beyond the base of his brain—a weak, etiolated intel- lect hearty, and worth anything; and yet how many such are dragged through their dreary curricula, and by some miraculous process of cramming, and equally miraculous power of tui’ning their insides out, get through their examinations: and then—what then? providentially, in most cases, they find their level; the broad daylight of the world,—its shrewd and keen eye, its strong instinct of what can, and what cannot serve its purpose,—puts all, except the poor object himself, to rights; happy is it for him if he turns to some new and more congenial pursuit in time. But it may be asked, how are the brains to be strengthened, the sense quickened, the genius awakened, the affections raised?—the whole man turned to the best account for the cure of his fellow-men? How are you, when physics and physiology are increasing so marvel- lously, and when the burden of knowledge, the quantity of trans- ferable information, of registered facts, of current names—and such names !—is so infinite: how are you to enable a student to take all in, bear up under all, and use it as not abusing it, or being abused by it? You must invigorate the containing and sustaining mind, you must strengthen him from within, as well as fill him from without; you must