Medical study : an introductory address, delivered at the Bristol Medical School, on Saturday, October 1, 1836, at the opening of the winter session / by J. A. Symonds.

  • Symonds, John Addington, 1807-1871.
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical study : an introductory address, delivered at the Bristol Medical School, on Saturday, October 1, 1836, at the opening of the winter session / by J. A. Symonds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    Greek physicians: If we compare any of the Greek writers in our faculty, from the very first of them, Hippocrates, to the time we are now speaking of, with the very best of their contemporaries of any art or profession whatever, they will be found not at all inferior to them, either in the disposition of their matter, the clearness of their reasoning, or the pro- priety of their language. Some of them have even written above the standard of the age they lived in; an incontestible instance of which is Areteeus. * * Galen himself was not only the best physician, but the best scholar and writer of his time. So great an honour have these authors done to their profession, by being versed in other arts and sciences as well as their own.—Hist, of Med. vol. i. p. 220. In the middle ages our profession still maintained itself above the vulgar level; whether fairly or not, we shall not now inquire. It is enough that, in this country at least, the art was chiefly practised by ecclesiastics, who held in their keeping nearly all the knowledge of the day. In the progress of the phy- sical and experimental sciences, as well as of the abstract, medicine was more or less intimately in- volved. At the revival of learning, no one was more zealous or influential in its promotion, than Linacre, the founder of the College of Physicians. And be- tween that period and our own times, many names might be numbered as belonging equally to the annals of literature, and to those of our profession. Such were Lord Bacon, Sir T. Browne, Locke, Meade, and Freind.