Physiology as a branch of general education and of natural science for students in arts : an address delivered to the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh, November 6, 1868 / by John Hughes Bennett.

  • Bennett, John Hughes, 1812-1875.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physiology as a branch of general education and of natural science for students in arts : an address delivered to the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh, November 6, 1868 / by John Hughes Bennett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    minute structures and organs of the human body—their pro- perties and functions, and the laws which regulate them. Others suppose that the cultivation of literature, poetry, and rhetoric, leads to the highest kind of knowledge. Well, if we de- sire to improve the fancy and give wings to the imagination, such perhaps is the best way of doing it. I don't undervalue the graces of literature, of poetry, of music, painting, or other of the fine arts ; but I argue that, if we wish to penetrate into the mys- teries of nature, if we desire to learn the secrets involved in the health and longevity of man—if, instead of imagination or what may he, our object be to discover truth and what is—then it is not the ancient classics and a love of poetry we should cultivate, but the severer studies of logic, mathematics, physics, and ex- perimental physiology. I am far from denying the advantage of studying geology, botany, and natural history. But why exclude physiology ? If it be useful to know the composition of the earth, to learn something of plants and of the animal kingdom, are we to remain ignorant of the structure and functions of our own bodies ? to know nothing of how we walk, speak, breathe, digest, or feel, and the relation which exists between the healthy state of man and the numerous conditions on which that health depends ? Yet at a time when our country is crying aloud for sanitary knowledge—when the ignorance of the public regarding it is poisoning our rivers, depriving us of wholesome drink, asphyxiating us in our houses, and increasing our taxes and means of living, physiology is to be excluded from the other natural history sciences in the arts curriculum of the University of Edinburgh! I am happy to know that all thinking men do not agree on this subject with my distinguished colleagues the Professors of Greek and of Ehetoric* In his address to the University of * Professor Masson has since explained that, without wishing to pre- judice the general study of physiology, he was anxious at the meeting of the General Council in May to limit the natural sciences to those men- tioned in the 18th ordinance of the University Commissioners — viz.