A picture of the present state of the Royal College of Physicians of London : containing memoirs, biographical, critical, and literary, of all the resident members of that learned body, and of the heads of the medical boards; with some other distinguished professional characters: to which is subjoined, an appendix; or, account of the different medical institutions of the metropolis, scientific and charitable, with their present establishments.

  • Nisbet, William, 1759-1822.
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A picture of the present state of the Royal College of Physicians of London : containing memoirs, biographical, critical, and literary, of all the resident members of that learned body, and of the heads of the medical boards; with some other distinguished professional characters: to which is subjoined, an appendix; or, account of the different medical institutions of the metropolis, scientific and charitable, with their present establishments. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    and to form both the moralist and philosopher. In the state in which it is accustomed to view and study man, it lays aside all the adventitious quali- ties, all the meretricious ornaments, which fortune or favor may confer. It levels distinctions, and views even a Caesar as cold dumb clay, a mass of matter, which shews no difference in its compo- sition from that which forms the vilest of the vile. When it proceeds further, it contemplates that matter as the seat of animation, and it is led to draw a line in its examination between animation itself, which it sees consist in certain movements and actions, and that unseen principle which gives it origin, which eludes detection in its embodied form, and which the pride of science must stoop to acknowledge is past finding out, and refer alone to one great and unknown first cause. Thus, though the physician cannot go so far as the Confessor of Louis the XlVth, who, in reply to that King's mistress, questioning his consequence, arrogantly observed, that he held her God every day in his hand, and saw her king at his feet, yet he may go the length of the latter part, and say, that under d sease, the Prince is equally as the pea- sant, subservient to his dictates, and more so we be- lieve, at all times, to the physician than the priest. Viewing medicine then in this important light, we become naturally interested in the merits of its Professors, and particularly of those who take a lead both in its science and practice.