Impediments to the study of medicine : a lecture, introductory to the course of practice of medicine / by J.K. Mitchell ... ; delivered on the 18th of November, 1850.

  • Mitchell, John Kearsley, 1798-1858.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Impediments to the study of medicine : a lecture, introductory to the course of practice of medicine / by J.K. Mitchell ... ; delivered on the 18th of November, 1850. 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.)

    7/32
    INTEODUCTORY LECTURE. Gentlemen of the Class—Students of Medicine :— It is only here, oi* in places like this, that men ever meet such an assemblage as now rests before me. There are here none who have not reached the period at least of incipient man- hood, and there are only a very few in this vast audience who have learned the sober lessons of active life. You are yet fresh and vigorous, young, ardent and inexperienced. The stars of hope yet glitter in your orient, unobscured by a single cloud, and untarnished by the exhalations of the misty world. You look on the past and the present without a sigh or a tear, and the beautiful future teems in your sanguine imagination with plea- sures and honors, unabated by satiety, and unblighted by envy. How I wish that it might ever be so with you. How I would de- light in believing, if I could, that you would falsify the mournful truth that man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upwards, and live a cloudless life of peace and tranquillity; looking on the past with complacency, on the present with comfort, and on the future with the fondest hopes—as the most ardent of English poets has beautifully expressed it— The mild majesty of private life, Where peace with ever-blooming olives crowns The gate ; where honor's liberal hands effuse Unenvicd treasures, and the snowy wings Of Innocence and Love protect the scene. Akenside.