Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/203

Rh introduction into a quarter where they were little likely to appear without a severe examination. This was in the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh, of which he was a member, and before which he was obliged in his turn to write a dissertation upon a subject selected by a committee of the society. The question proposed in 1823 was, "Does Phrenology afford a satisfactory explanation of the Moral and Intellectual Faculties of Man?" and Mr. Combe was appropriately selected to write the dissertation. He set to work upon the question con amore, and produced a digest of all he had learned, thought, and observed, to bear upon the affirmative, while the discussions that followed upon the subject occupied two nights of earnest debate before crowded audiences. This able article, which was first published in the "Phrenological Journal," was also included in the volume of selections to which we have already alluded. In 1825, he graduated as Doctor of Medicine, and on that occasion chose for the subject of his thesis, "The Seat and Nature of Hypochondriasis," which was also published in an enlarged form in the "Phrenological Journal," and the "Selections."

In commencing the medical art, first as surgeon and afterwards as doctor, Combe was made aware of two faults which, in his course of practice, he carefully laboured to avoid. The first was the practice of never interposing until the crisis of danger had arrived. No rules were prescribed, either to avoid a disease or escape the repetition of an attack after the first had been conquered. As long as the patient was upon his legs he might use what diet or exercise he pleased: upon all this the man of healing was silent; he thought it enough to come in at the moment of danger, and treat the sufferer secundum artem until the danger was over, without troubling himself about the morrow; and if fresh excesses produced a deadlier renewal of the malady, he was ready to double the dose, and proportion the penance to the evil. The homely proverb, that "prevention is better than cure," was too vulgar a rule for scientific notice; and it was only when the disease fairly showed face that a doctor girded himself for the onset. This was anything but satisfactory to Dr. Combe; and, in his treatment of every malady, he was more solicitous to prevent its occurrence than to show his professional prowess by overcoming it at its height; and if the constitution of the patient made the disease a natural tendency, his medical skill was exerted in showing how the coming of the evil might be retarded, or its inflictions softened. Hence his carefulness in inculcating the rules of diet and exercise, of ablution and ventilation, which, homely and common-place as they are, and therefore deemed unsuited to a learned physician, are yet the true essentials of the healing art. Another fault which he was also careful to avoid, was that of dictating to the patient the medical regulations that were to be strictly followed, without assigning a cause, or enlisting his reason in their behalf. A blind, implicit faith was exclusively demanded by too many of our medical practitioners, and the remedy was to be used without question or scruple. Dr. Combe saw that, however this pope-like assumption of infallibility might gratify the vanity of the physician, it was little likely to benefit the patient, more especially if his faith was of that unruly kind that requires argument and proof. He therefore tried to enlist the reason of the patient in behalf of the rules prescribed for his cure, and showed so much of the nature, origin, and tendencies of the disease as would enable him to co-operate in its removal. "The consequences of this mode of proceeding," says his biographer, "were equally beneficial to his patients and to himself. They became convinced that