--
"Diavolo!" as your Dr. Rabelais has it,--answers the iconoclast,--"what
is that to me and my colic, to me and my strangury? I pay the Captain of
the Cunard steamship to carry me quickly and safely to Liverpool, not to
make a chart of the Atlantic for after voyagers! If Professor Peirce
undertakes to pilot me into Boston Harbor and runs me on Cohasset rocks,
what answer is it to tell me that he is Superintendent of the Coast
Survey? No, Sir! I want a plain man in a pea-jacket and a sou'wester,
who knows the channel of Boston Harbor, and the rocks of Boston Harbor,
and the distinguished Professor is quite of my mind as to the matter, for
I took the pains to ask him before I ventured to use his name in the way
of illustration."
I do not know how the remarks of the image-breaker may strike others, but
I feel that they put me on my defence with regard to much of my teaching.
Some years ago I ventured to show in an introductory Lecture how very
small a proportion of the anatomical facts taught in a regular course, as
delivered by myself and others, had any practical bearing whatever on the
treatment of disease. How can I, how can any medical teacher justify
himself in teaching anything that is not like to be of practical use to a
class of young men who are to hold in their hands the balance in which
life and death, ease and anguish, happiness and wretchedness are to be
daily weighed?
I hope we are not all wrong.
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