The annual address to the graduates of the Medical College of South-Carolina : delivered March 23, 1830, after conferring the degree of doctor of medicine / by Thomas Y. Simons.

  • Simons, Thomas Y. (Thomas Young), 1798-1857.
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The annual address to the graduates of the Medical College of South-Carolina : delivered March 23, 1830, after conferring the degree of doctor of medicine / by Thomas Y. Simons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    meritorious and worthy of confidence, because he knows he dares not enter into an open and manly competition. He sports with the lives of his fellow-creatures with as much fearlessness and indiffer- ence as if he were pursuing an idle game. The solitude and af- fliction of widowhood—the miseries and tears of orphanage—the pride of manhood drooping under the loss of her who partici- pated in all his joys and all his sorrows—are spectacles with which he is familiar, but which create no sympathizing emotions in his mind. The ennobling characteristics of our profession are by him unknown and unfelt. Such are the men who prostitute and degrade the dignity—nay, the sanctity of our profession. Such are the men who have aroused the satirical denunciations of the poets of all ages, who have justly exposed them to public odium and indignation, whilst they have not failed to sing, in lofty praise, the virtues and the worth of those who may justly, in the language of Holy Writ, be called good and faithful stewards of mankind. I have made these preliminary observations, Gentlemen, not with a design to discourage or depress you, but rather to imbue you with a full sense of the awful and momentous responsibilities you are about to assume, and to urge you to make your exertions in Medical attainment, equal to those responsibilities. I wish you to be enthusiastic—to leave no efforts unexerted which will sustain the moral elevation of our profession or extend the boundaries of its usefulness. To enter upon the consideration of the various branches of a Medical education would not be suitable to the present occasion. You have elsewhere heard them fully discussed, and, I trust, you have felt their importance and value. Think not, however, that your studies are completed. You have an immense field for in- vestigation lying before you. The laborers in Medicine and Sci- ence are numerous, ardent and enthusiastic, and are continually enriching and adorning the tabernacle of knowledge. You must endeavour to emulate them, and be collaborators in their great intellectual enterprises. The Natural Sciences, so peculiarly fas- cinating, open a wide field for mental pleasure and improvement. To the Botanist, the most barren plains present something inter-