On the preservation of health, or, Essays explanatory of the principles to be adopted by those who desire to avoid disease / by Thomas Inman.

  • Inman, Thomas, 1820-1876.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the preservation of health, or, Essays explanatory of the principles to be adopted by those who desire to avoid disease / by Thomas Inman. 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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    of treatment, and one that the professor himself objected to, merely that their teaching may be in harmony with ancient writers who were once called distinguished. We shall see still further the value of talking plain English in the lecture room, and writing it in treatises, if we endeavour to realise the result thereof. In the first place, every teacher would be obliged to understand his subject ; and, secondly, he would be induced to make the matter comprehensible to his class. The students composing this would go into the world with a certain assured knowledge of what they had to effect, how much they could accomplish, and how to do that in the best manner. On this subject I can speak from personal knowledge. Whilst preparing the lectures on the Principles and Practice of Medicine for my class, I followed at the first my distinguished predecessors ; but, in attempting to explain and demonstrate why certain things were done, I soon became dissatisfied with my models, and with myself. One occasion I especially recollect. My text was Hysteria, and my sermon treated it according to the current fashion; but, just at the time when I was bringing my discourse to its conclusion, I discovered that I was talking, what seemed to me to be, such utter nonsense, that I made myself intentionally obscure. As I could not endure to teach clearly what I disbelieved, and I could not, on the spur of the moment, frame a rational view of the matter, that night saw me hard at work upon the whole