NOTE. THE present volume consists of a re-issue of the more purely professional papers published in 1866, to which I have added a few words on Dr. John Scott, Mr. Syme, and Sir Robert Christison. They are addressed more to myself than to any one else. At the request of a valued friend, the little Lectures on Health have been added as an Appendix. With some true things, and not unimportant, there are some rash and jejune ones; but though recognising fully the immense enlargement of our means of knowledge in these latter years, I would put in as strong a word as ever for the cultivation and concentration of the unassisted senses. Microscopes, sphygmographs, etc., are good, but don't let us neglect the drawing out into full power, by the keen and intelligent use of them, those eyes which we can always carry with us. It is this anpiẞea of the wise and subtle Greek, this accuracy (ad and cura) of the stout Roman, that is the eye of the physician and its memory, and it depends greatly on vivid attention in the act of seeing; as Dr. Chalmers said, there is a looking as well as a seeing. 'I've lost my spectacles,' said good easy Lord Cuninghame, as he was mooning about Brougham Hall in search of them, when on a visit to his vehement old friend its Lord, whose mind was always in full spate. 'Where did you lay them?' said Brougham. I forget.' 'Forget! you should never forget; nobody should forget. I never forget. You should attend; I always do. I observed where you laid your spectacles; there they are!' The only other things I would now mention are, Ist, The cramming system of Examinations. Surely this matter, which is becoming an enormous nuisance and mischief and oppres sion to examiners as well as examinees, has reached that proverbial point when things begin to mend. Let some strong-brained, wideknowledged, and merciful man find out the how to mend. 2d, I am more convinced than ever of the futility and worse of the Licensing system, and think, with Adam Smith, that a mediciner should be as free to exercise his gifts as an architect or a molecatcher. The Public has its own shrewd way of knowing who should build its house or catch its moles, and it may quite safely be left to take the same line in choosing its doctor. Lawyers, of course, are different, as they have to do with the State-with the law of the land. 23 RUTLAND STREET, April 12, 1882. J. B. |