Truth, pathology, and the public : address to the graduates in medicine at the close of the summer session, University of Glasgow, Thursday, July 29, 1880 / by John Cleland, M.D., F.R.S., Professor of Anatomy, University of Glasgow.

  • Cleland, John, 1835-1924.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Truth, pathology, and the public : address to the graduates in medicine at the close of the summer session, University of Glasgow, Thursday, July 29, 1880 / by John Cleland, M.D., F.R.S., Professor of Anatomy, University of Glasgow. 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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    to be nursed to a healthy and more mature condition, ere the time for transplanting arrives, when it is to become useful or ornamental by the exercise of the healthy powers which have been educed. It is palpable that in all pro- fessional education there is a large mass of fact to be learned, but obvious also that the facts will be of little use, without the art of handling them and turning them to account. More especially is this the case in medicine. The facts which are brought under the notice of medical students are, as you have experienced, these : the modes of preservation of health and treatment of disease ; the laws of health and disease and the actions of remedies, which form the immediate basis of treatment; the structure of the body, without a knowledge of which its operations, healthy and otherwise, cannot be known, and without which you dare not use the knife ; the chemical laws which govern both the body in its opera- tions and the remedies which you propose to use ; and lastly, thq characters of animals and - vegetables, that domain of life to which our life belongs. I have placed foremost that which is most prominent in the minds of most of you—the treatment of disease; and I do not doubt that you have all learned a great number of details of treat- ment which you will use to the advantage of patients yet unborn, as well as others, it is to be hoped. But remember that the changes which take place in treatment are perpetual, and that there is nothing reliable in any treatment which is not based on science.