Valedictory address on the sources and benefits of professional earnestness : delivered March 3, 1849, to the graduates of the Medical College of Ohio / by John P. Harrison.

  • Harrison, John P. (John Pollard), 1796-1849.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Valedictory address on the sources and benefits of professional earnestness : delivered March 3, 1849, to the graduates of the Medical College of Ohio / by John P. Harrison. 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.)

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    Gentlemen : After an assiduous application of your powers to the study of medical science, you stand invested with the honors of the doctorate. Well have you acquitted yourselves in the ardu- ous task of attendance on our prelections and demonstration? during the past .winter. Days and weeks, and months have elapsed since yon came together, as students of a high and useful branch of human learning, that your minds might be furnished with the acquisitions needful to an honorable pros- ecution of the practice of medicine. And now, ere we sep- arate, permit me to address a few suggestions to your candid and considerate attention, which may, I hope, tell on your future history; which may direct your footsteps, and uphold your course through the coming years of your profession- al life. The special subject chosen for my remarks this evening, is professional earnestness—its sources and benefits. Earnestness of character, prompting to a warm and eager pursuit of the great interests of human existence, is a fine, ennobling trait of the American people. The soil we tread is full of the mementos of this trait of character—whether we live amidst the scenes consecrated to immortality by the valorous deeds of our fathers, as they hand to hand, in then- animated struggles for freedom, met and beat back a civilized foe, or walk over the ground dyed with the blood of wes- tern pioneers, shed by a savage enemy. The air we breathe is rife with the quickening elements of an earnest life—no sound floats on the breeze but the voice of freemen, calling on each other to renewed efforts in the race of social pro- gress. The heavens echo back the sound, and all nature travails together in earnest manifestations of the living pow- er, and inspiring hopefulness, of the glorious destiny which awaits us. All nations, in fixed and solemn, and soul cheering atten-