Oliver Goldsmith and medicine / by Raymond Crawfurd.

  • Crawfurd, Raymond Henry Payne, 1865-1938.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Oliver Goldsmith and medicine / by Raymond Crawfurd. 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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    written from Leyden early in 1754, that he was without a degree at the age of 25. We need not press this point further at this stage beyond insisting that either Goldsmith’s statement or Percy’s record of it is wrong, and, not unmindful of Johnson’s testimony to Percy’s meticulous accuracy, we shall hope to show that the former alternative accords best with the other evidence. Loyalty to his friend, whose frailties were only too familiar to him, appears more than once to move Percy to an economy of information. Of Goldsmith’s life in Edinburgh his own surviving letters tell us enough to justify the belief that, at that period of his career, he did seriously intend to prepare himself for the practice of medicine. On May 8, 1753, he wrote to his uncle Contarine, as follows:— ‘ Apropos, I shall give you the professors’ names, and as far as occurs to me, their characters : and first, as most deserving, Mr. Munro, professor of Anatomy. This man has brought the science he teaches us to as much per- fection as it is capable of; and not content with barely teaching anatomy, he launches out into all the branches of physic, when all his remarks are new and useful. ’Tis he, I may venture to say, that draws hither such a number of students from most parts of the world, even from Eussia. He is not only a skilful physician, but an able orator, and delivers things in their nature obscure in so easy a manner, that the most unlearned may understand him. Plume, professor of Chemistry, understands his business well, but delivers himself so ill, that he is but little regarded. Alston, professor of Materia Medica, speaks much, but little to the purpose. The professors of Theory and Practice (of physic) say nothing hut what may be found in books laid before us ; and speak that in so drowsy and heavy a manner, that their hearers are not many degrees in a better state than their patients. You see then, dear sir, that Munro is the only great man among them, so that I intend to hear him another winter, and go then to hear Albinus, the great professor at Leyden. I read (with satisfaction) a science the most pleasing in nature, so that my labours are but a relaxation, and, I may truly say, the only thing here that gives me pleasure. How I enjoy the pleasing hope of returning, with skill, and to find my friends stand in no need of my assistance,” &c. That Goldsmith did actually carry out his intention of sitting at the feet of Munro for another winter session we learn from the extant class-rolls of that professor. An entry in the books of the Medical Society of Edinburgh, a voluntary association of students, shows that Goldsmith was admitted a member on January 13, 1753, but was exempted from the usual obligation of reading a paper on a medical subject; perhaps his social rather than his professional recommendations had secured him the
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