Transactions of the Medical Society of King's College, London.

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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Transactions of the Medical Society of King's College, London. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of information from books or from lectures. As we follow tlie speaker thought after thought starts up, to which in our turn, while the impression is fresh upon us, we give utter¬ ance. Objections are raised, questions are put, misconcep¬ tions are removed; the fleeting idea is seized as it passes through the mind, and the thought just trembling into life is confirmed by utterance, which otherwise might have slipped back into darkness, never after to be called forth. Our observations become in turn a fresh centre for thought to start from, and for criticism to be directed upon. And so we go on, wandering away into all the ramifications of the subject under discussion, till we have thoroughly probed and sifted it in every part. Each man acts as a foil to his neigh¬ bour, and serves to “bring him out;” and I assure you I have often gone away from one of this Society’s debates surprised at the knowledge of the subject I had evinced, and equally surprised, I may say, at the amount I had learned. 3. We are all apt individually to get into a rut, to work upon a tram-road from which we cannot wander, and to think in a certain formulated way. In the debates of societies the discussions are influenced by other minds than our own, and thoughts are suggested to us which would never have occurred to us spontaneously, and thus the field of our speculations is widened, and we get more enterprize and variety of thought, our knowledge is less fragmentary and partial, and our thoughts and attention less confined to our own particular hob¬ bies. There is many a department of medical knowledge that if left to ourselves we should never work. We are all disposed, more or less, to become specialists, to become eccentric, to wander away from the juste milieu. Our intellectual nature is subject to the same laws as our moral, and intellectual