Page:Introductory Lecture 109 Medical Department University of Pennsylvania Stille.djvu/10

 not only leaves its impress upon his mind, but more or less moulds it in a peculiar form. The more exclusively it is cultivated the more visible does its power become. So generally is this truth recognized that a shrewd observer will often be able to decide upon the occupation of a man from his bearing in society, and the manner as-distinguished from the matter of his conversation. The dogmatic style of the theologian looking always to an infallible authority; the clear, well-arranged ideas of the jurist, who also is governed by authority, founded perhaps in nature, but artificial in form; the mathematician shut in a still narrower field hedged by abstract ideas; the study of all these when exclusively pursued tends to narrow the mind and dry the heart. Even the pure chemist, dealing only with the physical relations of atoms, their attractions, repulsions, combinations, and decompositions, regards as the highest expression of his science an algebraical formula which is abstract and lifeless. There is no human side to his science, and therefore, however it may enlighten the understanding, it leaves the moral sentiments uncultivated. But the charm of medical studies is that their tendency is the very opposite of this. They include the most varied and dissimilar elements, stretching from the abstract and impersonal on the one side, to the opposite and material limits of the field of knowledge; for the physician has to deal with the living body and the immortal soul, with the physical heart and the moral heart. Along this vast range there is hardly a science which he may not invite into the service of humanity; hardly an art which he may not make subservient to the health and happiness of mankind; hardly a branch of knowledge which he may not compel to be his help-mate in the prevention or the cure of disease. He cannot constantly watch the reactions of soul and body, as he alone is able to, without being impelled to study the great questions that lie at the foundation of human belief. He cannot witness the amazing uniformity in the relations of cause and effect without embracing the fundamental ideas of all legislation, human and divine. With the mathematician he can calculate the forces which man exhibits as a living machine, and with the chemist study the generation