* * * *
*
Footnotes:
[1] Mr. Quam’s words (Medical Times and Gazette,
February 20) are:—“A few words as
to our special Medical course of instruction and the
influence upon it of such changes in the elementary
schools as I have mentioned. The student now
enters at once upon several sciences—physics,
chemistry, anatomy, physiology, botany, pharmacy,
therapeutics—all these, the facts and the
language and the laws of each, to be mastered in eighteen
months. Up to the beginning of the Medical course
many have learned little. We cannot claim anything
better than the Examiner of the University of London
and the Cambridge Lecturer have reported for their
Universities. Supposing that at school young
people had acquired some exact elementary knowledge
in physics, chemistry, and a branch of natural history—say
botany—with the physiology connected with
it, they would then have gained necessary knowledge,
with some practice in inductive reasoning. The
whole studies are processes of observation and induction—the
best discipline of the mind for the purposes of life—for
our purposes not less than any. ’By such
study (says Dr. Whewell) of one or more departments
of inductive science the mind may escape from the
thraldom of mere words.’ By that plan the
burden of the early Medical course would be much lightened,
and more time devoted to practical studies, including
Sir Thomas Watson’s ‘final and supreme
stage’ of the knowledge of Medicine.”
SCIENCE AND CULTURE
[1880]
Six years ago, as some of my present hearers may remember,
I had the privilege of addressing a large assemblage
of the inhabitants of this city, who had gathered
together to do honour to the memory of their famous
townsman, Joseph Priestley; [1] and, if any satisfaction
attaches to posthumous glory, we may hope that the
manes of the burnt-out philosopher were then finally
appeased.
No man, however, who is endowed with a fair share
of common sense, and not more than a fair share of
vanity, will identify either contemporary or posthumous
fame with the highest good; and Priestley’s life
leaves no doubt that he, at any rate, set a much higher
value upon the advancement of knowledge, and the promotion
of that freedom of thought which is at once the cause
and the consequence of intellectual progress.
Hence I am disposed to think that, if Priestley could
be amongst us to-day, the occasion of our meeting
would afford him even greater pleasure than the proceedings
which celebrated the centenary of his chief discovery.
The kindly heart would be moved, the high sense of
social duty would be satisfied, by the spectacle of
well-earned wealth, neither squandered in tawdry luxury
and vainglorious show, nor scattered with the careless
charity which blesses neither him that gives nor him
that takes, but expended in the execution of a well-considered
plan for the aid of present and future generations
of those who are willing to help themselves.
