Address delivered at the opening of the medical classes in the University of Glasgow, on Monday, October 27, 1873 / by George H.B. Macleod.

  • Macleod, George Husband Baird, 1828-1892.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address delivered at the opening of the medical classes in the University of Glasgow, on Monday, October 27, 1873 / by George H.B. Macleod. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    by exciting your enthusiasm and desire to learn, and indicating hoiv to pursue your vocation, and where materials are best found. Here you will enjoy remark- able advantages as regards books, and if you are taught how best to utilize these, you will gain much. Your education is a life-long affair. Begun in some measure in the cradle, it ends only in the grave. Every-day and hour, every passing thought and feeling, adds its quota of good or ill,—every act and wish, well or ill- directed, goes to form the character, and train it 'for its future destiny. At College, impelled by all the fervour of youth, receptive of every surrounding influence, and with judgments yet immature, many dangers surround you, and to avoid or overcome them there is need of constant control and watchfulness. Many come here fresh from the happy restraints of home, and at an age when pleasure is the chief end, and indolence a besetting sin; and being cast loose, as it were, on a great city, forget their duty, and the foundations of their character are sapped. Let me implore of you to be careful. In a thoughtless moment you may lay up a store of bitter regrets which long years may fail to assuage, and habits may very quickly be acquired which will finally destroy your happiness ; for, as expressed by Horace, a new cask will long retain the flavour of the first liquor with which it is impregnated. If, on the other hand, you imbibe the true genius of this place, you will acquire a fit estimate of your own exceeding ignorance, with a becoming reverence for intellectual conquests, for all that is noble and great in the past, for high aims and exatled ambition, and you will strive so to guide