On the relation of practical medicine to philosophical method, and popular opinion : being the Annual Oration delivered before the North London Medical Society, on February 10th, 1858 / by J. Russell Reynolds.

  • John Russell Reynolds
Date:
[1858?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the relation of practical medicine to philosophical method, and popular opinion : being the Annual Oration delivered before the North London Medical Society, on February 10th, 1858 / by J. Russell Reynolds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    thrown the mysterious veil of so-called “ unconsciousness.’’ We hear them “ wandering ” in the darkness our human knowledge strives to penetrate in vain; we feel that it may be light. What questions are we not asked by those who stand arouud, eager to know what relation those objects of solicitude, and of long years of love, yet bear to them ! There lies the vesture of mortality, scarcely rustling with the breath of life. Can it again be placed on common terms with us? Are there any ties yet left unsevered ? Or is it, even now, the cast-off garment, fitted only for decay? We stand appalled before the great facts we can neither doubt nor explain. We are conscious of our two fold being We can recognise its intense reality in the consciousness of others. We are regarded as the interpreters of that awful hour; but how to interpret all these circumstances is not taught us in pa- thological treatises; how to act under them finds no place in our sys- tematic therapeutics. We have to learn it by the study of ourselves and others, and by the experience which time alone can give. But “ thanks to the human heart, by which we live,” thanks to its nobler nature, its common sympathies. “ its tenderness, its hopes, and fears,” the suffering man has always found in the Medical Pro- fession the succour and support he needs; and if, year after year, the scientific advances which are accomplished are not such as to satisfy the ambitious inquirer after truth, yet the sorrows of humanity are hourly soothed, and the load of life is lessened by the unselfish care and kindly offices of that Profession, whose mission—to use the words of one of its great Masters, but recently passed away—is to “ cure the curable and comfort the incurableand in whose ranks it is our common honour and privilege to take our stand.
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