Letter to the Right Hon. the Lord Provost, in refutation of certain charges against Queen's College by Mr. Syme.

Date:
[1840?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to the Right Hon. the Lord Provost, in refutation of certain charges against Queen's College by Mr. Syme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    1) dignity and influence conferred on him by those who raised him to the chair he occupies ? 1 ask him, if his predecessor, who spent a long life in the respect of his fellow-men, ever impaired the dignity of his chair, or of himself, by indulging in harsh and injurious accusations ? If he ever did anything havinsr the tendency to raise his own character on the ruin of O * another’s ? For your Lordship would commit a great mistake if you supposed, that the only tendency of Mr. Syme’s Letter is insultingly to dictate to you. It is calculated for another end, whether designedly or not, which cannot be overlooked. I shall leave your Lordship to guess the result to which I refer—a task which you will have no difficulty in accomplish- ing, when you learn that the letter addressed to you has been assiduously circulated among the students, on the very eve of an individual, connected with Queen’s College, being about to enter on the same department of surgical instruction as that which Mr. Syme professes to teach,—an individual, whose popularity among the students in the Edinburgh School of Medicine, great as it is, is scarcely yet equal to his deserts as a scientific and honourable man, and whose opposition would assuredly be felt as formidable by any man. If a doubt of the injurious tendency to which I allude exist on your Lordship’s mind, I refer you to that mon- strous passage on the last page of Mr. Syme’s Letter, which points at the individual in question. That Mr. Syme can do great injury to any Lecturer in the estimation of the students of this School, I do not believe. The spirit which animates his Letter to your Lordship has been too much the subject of amusement among them—(for the young too often laugh at what they should commiserate or condemn)—to be a formidable weapon against the humblest opponent. In defending Queen’s College, I have not conceived it re- quisite to dwell seriatim on the smaller matters laid to our charge,—such as the name of our College, and so forth.—I have been contented with showing, in all plainness, what means wc have taken to let our real position he known, and how