The touchstone of medical reform; in three letters, addressed to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, bart / [Joseph Henry Green].

  • Green, Joseph Henry, 1791-1863
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The touchstone of medical reform; in three letters, addressed to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, bart / [Joseph Henry Green]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fession to its due estimation by society at large can be dependent only upon science ; so for the attainment of this science the medical profession must be en¬ grafted on the trunk of universal science, and must be cultivated in connection with the liberal arts and sciences—therefore entitled liberal because they are cultivated, without hire or compulsion, on the score of their own worth and dignifying influences—and which form so many diverging branches of the great trunk of human knowledge, so many forms of one and the same spirit of truth. In enumerating the attainments, which an enlarged course of professional study implies, it would be difficult to exclude any sort of knowledge as undesirable; but. assuredly on a consideration of the aims and objects of medical education we cannot but regard as indispensable requisites : — 1. The knowledge of words, their definite import and right use, as grounded in grammar, and evinced by a correct style. 2. The knowledge of the elements of mathematical science, as the discipline of the pure sense. 3. The knowledge of experimental science, as affording the requisite discipline of the senses. 4. The knowledge of logic, as the laws of right reasoning, the forms of all legitimate conclusion, and the criterion of truth and falsehood. 5. The knowledges properly medical, grounded on physics, physiology, and psychology. And surely if the legi¬ timate object of medical study be that of establishing a science of medicine, it will be necessary, in order