A treatise on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the chest. Part I, Diseases of the lung and windpipe / by William Stokes ; with memoir by Dr. Acland ; edited for the New Sydenham Society by Alfred Hudson.

  • Stokes, William, 1804-1878.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the chest. Part I, Diseases of the lung and windpipe / by William Stokes ; with memoir by Dr. Acland ; edited for the New Sydenham Society by Alfred Hudson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    every form of the severest disease, whether in the homes of the poor or in the wards of the great Infirmary ; and he watched the workings of the tender spirit whose goodness surpassed even its great scientific knowledge, and drew in the lessons to be derived from one, in whom the pursuit of intellectual truth in things material or physiological was a passion, but who yet never seemed to forget that the moral elevation of his fellow-men was a worthier object than the promotion of their material interests and comforts. Of his life as a student I am unable to find details, but what has just been said, added to one other fact, is sufficient. Before he left Edinburgh, at the end of two years residence, he had prepared for publication and published a volume on the use of the stethoscope—for which little work he received the large sum of £70. No better evidence than this can be adduced of the effect that the influence of Alison and others had upon the young Irish student. Yet I cannot forbear relating a story of how this influence began, as I have heard it, not from himself, but from his family. He was walking one wet night down the old Cowgate; he observed a crowd at the entrance of a dark passage ; he stopped to see what it could mean ; he entered a low room filled with sick poor and Professor Alison seated among them ; he watched the scene ; a young man evidently suffering from advanced fever stepped forward. Alison paid, My poor man (I can now hear him say it), go to your bed, and when I have done here I will come to you. Young Stokes then stepped forward and said, Sir, I will take the poor man to his home. Who are you ? asked Alison. One of your pupils ; my name is Stokes. I never saw you before, said Alison. Perhaps not, but I have seen you, for I go to your lectures. Let me take the poor man home, and I will come and tell you how he goes on. Very well, said Alison, you may go. From that time they were companions and friends. With this seed, scientific and human, I would almost say Christ- like or divine, thus sown, Stokes returned to Dublin, to face in