Page:An Examination of Certain Charges - Alfred Stillé.djvu/20

 removed; declaring to the medical profession and the world, that the complaints of the students were founded in justice, and that the best interests of the University called aloud for the decided step they had taken as a last resort.

Nothing took place of sufficient interest to arrest attention, until the 21st Feb. when the publication of 'a Physician,' attracted the notice of the class. We have now arrived at the point whence we sat out, and believe that nothing within the province of the committee has been passed in silence, as regards the facts of the case, and that no fact has in its constituent parts, or its relations, been partially stated, distorted, or magnified. Further comment, at this stage of the discussion, is considered unnecessary, and we now proceed to the consideration of several propositions, having a general bearing upon the expediency and justice of the course adopted by the class. The first we shall notice is, in regard to the competency of the late Professor. To be competent is to have a fitness for a given purpose, to be duly qualified. What are the qualifications for a lecturer on Materia Medica, in the 36th year of the nineteenth century? Is it not a minute acquaintance with that mine of discovery which Europe is tracing with all the eagerness and accuracy of enlightened philosophy? Is it not to search with avidity the rivers that come in torrents from the four corners of the earth, for the golden sands of knowledge? Is it not to be where the great revolutions in the scientific world have carried all who boast another than a spurious fame, a celebrity, and not a notoriety? Is it not to combine ardor, eloquence, activity, with utility and interest? Or, is it to be learned alone in the lore of Rome and Greece,—to hold familiar converse with Hippocrates, Galen and Celsus, repeat their dogmas, and detail their controversies, to drag from its egg, where it had reposed for centuries unsuspected, the germ of some existing art; to cling to a chemical nomenclature that our fathers used; and to render intolerably dull, without a single redeeming ray, a science second to none in interest or usefulness; in fine, to consume one-fourth to one-third of a course of lectures, in disquisitions on the vitality of the blood, and subjects of a kindred nature. Which of these characters belongs to the competent Professor of Materia Medica, and which to the Ex-Professor, it needs no skill to determine. Learning, though it be mere antiquarian research, is often pleasing from its quaintness, but we contend, that the only learning fitted for the purpose of instructing others, is that reducible to practical utility. Knowledge then becomes wisdom, from which it but too often differs toto cœlo.

When the late Professor was elected to the chair of chemistry in the University, many years since, there was a general disapproval of the selection by the community, and among the students of that period not a dissimilar sentiment. The late Dr. Rush, that bright sun in the system of American science, was influential in procuring the vote in favor of Dr. Coxe, but regretted, to the last moment of his life, the use of his influence for that purpose. What a comment on the assertions of 'a Physician,' "that the question as to Dr. Coxe's competency, is too rediculousridiculous [sic] to be discussed!" that "during the most brilliant epoch in the