The moral aspects of medical life, consisting of the 'Akesios' of Professor K.F.H. Marx / translated from the German, with biographical notices and illustrative remarks, By James Mackness.

  • Marx, K. F. H. (Karl Friedrich Heinrich), 1796-1877.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The moral aspects of medical life, consisting of the 'Akesios' of Professor K.F.H. Marx / translated from the German, with biographical notices and illustrative remarks, By James Mackness. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    the ideal of duty can only arise from the satisfaction of daily duty, out of the necessity of an equal cultivation in the Eeal and Formal. Who can bear a clearer testimony than yourself to the necessity and the reward of private industry in the study of the great masters, and the attempt to develop right conceptions clearly and simply ? The Dutch Hippocrates, whom one cannot certainly reproach with partiality to a regular education, was, in a great part, self-educated; his teachers were especially the ancients, and his wonderful influence on his generation and on posterity was attained principally through the weight of a polite and liberal education. When, therefore, the scholar invokes panem et circenses, and desires there should be given him only what is indispensable to sub- sistence, and all as light as child's play, there is no scope left to the well-qualified teacher. There is no reason to fear that the study of medicine will become a torus medicatus, or even Graham's celestial bed; yet it is made too easy by the aid of manuals of therapeutics, which resemble a chrestomathy* or anthology, alphabetical encyclopsedias, and works on physiology, sur- gery, practical medicine, illustrated like children's books with pictures. The only parts of a man's head which are brought into practice are his eyes, and where a picture can represent an object no thought is required. At no time has so much labour been bestowed upon the outside, that superficial organ, and with so much satis- faction, as at the present. But if the question is about the exterior, and the skin, and the raiment, we may also think * It is called in the Commentariolus de Vitae cursu propria Boerhaavii manu conscriptus (in Burton's' Life of Hermann Boerhaave,' London, 1746, p. 207): Est forsan incredibile nullum a nostro medicinae auditum professorem, nisi cl. Drelincurtium paucis vicibus paulo ante fata. 4§