Relations of popular education with the progress of empiricism : annual address read before the New Jersey Medical Society at its eighty-seventh anniversary, held at Trenton, Jan. 25, 1853 / by Othniel H. Taylor.

  • Taylor, Othniel H. (Othniel Hart), 1803-1869.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Relations of popular education with the progress of empiricism : annual address read before the New Jersey Medical Society at its eighty-seventh anniversary, held at Trenton, Jan. 25, 1853 / by Othniel H. Taylor. 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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    portunity of attending a really philosophical course of popular lectures, upon the principles of physiology and hygiene, when the knife of the lecturer, acting perhaps on the body of some brute animal, in condescension to the natural aversion from hu- man dissection, has laid bare before him, in one broad view, the almost infinite complexity of bones, muscles, nerves, vessels, viscera and tissues, and reacting to a common purpose in the most ordinary operations of daily life. When this inquirer finds that all his efforts, short of years of exertion, would fail to fix upon bis memory the details involved in the performance of any general function ; would he dare to trust the simplest external injury of any gravity, to the management of the natural bone- setter who becomes a surgeon by intuition ? When taught that the severest pain in the head may result from a concealed irritation of the stomach—that the most dangerous fever may be merely a symptom of a pin-scratch on the toe, too slight to at- tract the attention of the patient, will he repose confidence in an arrogant sect who prescribe only for symptoms, and advocate the doctrine similia similibus curantur. Even to suppose the possibility of such results, is to deny the impress of rationality, stamped by his Maker upon man. I have always entertained the opinion, that it was possible for practitioners of our profession, by the natural effects of the habit of looking at the res angusta domi, to become near sighted, as the over attentive school-boy does, when he robs himself of his natural rest, and devotes himself unceasingly to his wearying pages, in order to win the honor of some far dis- tant prize. The otium cum dignitate of a professional old age, is the wisest as well as the most rational object of every one who wastes the energies of early and middle life, in the self- sacrificing and exhausting duties of our calling, and it behooves us to be careful in struggling too constantly, though with hono- rable feelings after this most desirable result, that we should not permit ourselves to overlook those opportunities of usefulness, which occur on either hand, though they may be at some little distance from our immediate path. The members of a truly liberal profession should never for a moment forget, that to communicate knowledge, is to repay the