A letter from a medical student on some moral difficulties in his studies, and on the duty of the state to aid in lessening them : addressed to the Rev. J.H. North.

Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter from a medical student on some moral difficulties in his studies, and on the duty of the state to aid in lessening them : addressed to the Rev. J.H. North. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    any of those arrangements upon which his comfort depends. He has to settle and arrange for himself all those household affairs, which present no slight diffi- culty to those who are far older and more experienced than himself. He is alone ; and solitude in London is of all things the most desolate. In these circum- stances he applies for guidance to those who, not unfrequently, are least able to render him effectual aid ; he is at least as likely to fall into bad hands as into good : it may be, a notice stuck up in the hall of the hospital catches his eye, and he takes refuge from his perplexity in the first lodging-house that presents itself; and in this situation, unfriendly to his moral character, unfavourable to study, not ad- mitting any superintendence, and destitute of all domestic comfort, he passes the first months, perhaps, which in the whole of his life have not been spent in the society of his family or friends.” Thus freely have I recalled to your recollection your own words—as freely will I show you some phases of the moral life, to which the student is now first introduced, leaving you to infer how sad the picture is, and how easily a brighter light might be made to gleam across it. He enters a large hospital, with no adequate notion of medical study or its nature—no idea which had painted for him its wearisome details (if so he please to judge them), its many drawbacks, its horrors, its sad accompaniments of physical and mental sorrow. He had not thought upon the number of the sick