Page:Advice to Medical Students (1857) William Henry Fuller.djvu/19

19 this scene of your labours, how well acquainted you will have become with disease, and how large a store of facts you will have accumulated—facts, moreover, of a practical nature, which will serve as references in after years, and prove most valuable guides to you through life. At first possibly your study may appear to be productive of very little result, for some time must necessarily elapse before you can acquire familiarity with disease, or form a correct judgment as to the administration of remedies. But this is not a ground for slackening your exertions. The seed takes time to swell and sprout, the fruit to grow and ripen, but the various stages of growth are accomplished nevertheless, each in its appointed season; and when at length the harvest time arrives, the crop is found to be closely proportioned to the skill and labour bestowed on its cultivation. So also will it be in regard to the attention you are now induced to give to the clinical investigation of disease. This is your time for tilling the land and sowing the seed; and although day by day, as you work in the wards, you may fail to perceive that you derive any advantage from it, you will find in future years that the seed you now sow will bring forth vigorous and healthy plants, and return you an abundant harvest. Have confidence in what I tell you then, and persevere unto the end: your time cannot be more profitably employed, or your energies turned to a more practical account.

It is with this feeling, that we have this year determined to establish a distinct department of clinical instruction, and to offer several valuable prizes to those who show themselves most proficient in that practical knowledge which can be acquired only at the bedside of the patient. To further our