The elements of medical chemistry : embracing only those branches of chemical science which are calculated to illustrate or explain the different objects of medicine, and to furnish a chemical grammar to the author's Pharmacologia / by John Ayrton Paris.

  • Paris, John Ayrton, 1785-1856.
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The elements of medical chemistry : embracing only those branches of chemical science which are calculated to illustrate or explain the different objects of medicine, and to furnish a chemical grammar to the author's Pharmacologia / by John Ayrton Paris. 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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    Author. During- the period you mention, general knowledge hat made a rapid stride ; and it would have been passing strange had not medical science participated in the ad- vancement ; but I am by no means satisfied that our sys- tem of teaching has been improved. li is true that among our Metropolitan lecturers, may be ranked some of the first philosophers of the age ; but there are many compe- titors, some of whom, to maintain their ground, have in- troduced a system of grinding or cramming as it is technically called in our universities, which allures pupils, from the assistance it affords them in passing an examina- tion at the College of Surgeons, or at Apothecaries' Hall, but is, in my humble judgment, ill calculated to impart solid information. Practitioner. This remark is not new to me. I have often been as- tonished at the harlequinade dexterity with which a college license has transformed the new student into the sapient practitioner, and the humble scholar into the dogmatical lecturer. Author. The evils which arise from such a system are to be easily- avoided. But before I proceed to offer you any advice upon this subject, you must inform me of the views you entertain respecting the future destiny of your son. Do you intend that he shall succeed you in country practice, or will you send him forth as a surgeon or physician. Af- ter the extraordinary success which has attended your townsman, I conclude that nothing short of the rank of a London Physician will bound your expectations. Practitioner. The case, my dear Sir, to which you allude, must tend to extinguish rather than to encourage such ambition, i