Confessions of the faculty : a collection of curious and important facts, deeply interesting to heads of families and invalids / by Socius.

Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Confessions of the faculty : a collection of curious and important facts, deeply interesting to heads of families and invalids / by Socius. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    34/54 (page 34)
    published with a view to enlighten the Public, and to stimulate the Faculty to alter their course, and the prevailing system of educating students in Medicine. We strongly deprecate the present erro- neous plan of teaching opinions, when pro- fessors should be engaged in teaching facts; and we would tell the student, that blind acquiescence is not a virtue, but is rather the characteristic of an imbecile : and that on the other hand, honest and manly investigation is the characteristic of avirtuous and independent mind. To all we say, Awake! Arise! Examine! We see that the old system of medicine has no title to be regarded as a method with which we ought to be content, for it has been most justly denounced as a destroying Art, by those intelligent and upright men who have devoted the labour of their lives to its practice. We often see that fashion and self-interest prompt men to the course they pursue, and we are convinced that with a vast number, an original defect in their moral and intellectual training, renders them pre-disposed to receive the opinions of their teachers as truisms which brighter intellects have propounded,—which the lapse of time has encircled with autho- rity,—but with an inquiry into the truth of