American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of BiologyHuxley, Thomas Henry
Science
American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Biology -- Study and teaching; Evolution; Johns Hopkins University
Again, materia medica, so
far as it is a knowledge of drugs, is the business of the druggist. In
all other callings the necessity of the division of labour is fully
recognised, and it is absurd to require of the medical man that he
should not avail himself of the special knowledge of those whose
business it is to deal in the drugs which he uses. It is all very well
that the physician should know that castor oil comes from a plant, and
castoreum from an animal, and how they are to be prepared; but for all
the practical purposes of his profession that knowledge is not of one
whit more value, has no more relevancy, than the knowledge of how the
steel of his scalpel is made.
All knowledge is good. It is impossible to say that any fragment of
knowledge, however insignificant or remote from one's ordinary pursuits,
may not some day be turned to account. But in medical education, above
all things, it is to be recollected that, in order to know a little
well, one must be content to be ignorant of a great deal.
Let it not be supposed that I am proposing to narrow medical education,
or, as the cry is, to lower the standard of the profession. Depend upon
it there is only one way of really ennobling any calling, and that is to
make those who pursue it real masters of their craft, men who can truly
do that which they profess to be able to do, and which they are credited
with being able to do by the public. And there is no position so ignoble
as that of the so-called "liberally-educated practitioner," who, as
Talleyrand said of his physician, "Knows everything, even a little
physic;" who may be able to read Galen in the original; who knows all
the plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall; but
who finds himself, with the issues of life and death in his hands,
ignorant, blundering, and bewildered, because of his ignorance of the
essential and fundamental truths upon which practice must be based.
Moreover, I venture to say, that any man who has seriously studied all
the essential branches of medical knowledge; who has the needful
acquaintance with the elements of physical science; who has been brought
by medical jurisprudence into contact with law; whose study of insanity
has taken him into the fields of psychology; has _ipso facto_ received a
liberal education.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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