Page:Introductory Lecture 109 Medical Department University of Pennsylvania Stille.djvu/17

 and therefore it is of the highest importance that he should from the beginning to the end of his pupilage be so educated as to acquire a proper method as well as the habit of research, and so be enabled and incited to pursue his studies throughout his professional career.

The doctrines I have endeavored to illustrate are simply such as I have many times defended, but there seemed to be a peculiar obligation to take advantage of this occasion to enforce them anew. For now it is that the friends of the University are warmed by the memory of its past distinction, the spectacle of its inauguration in this new edifice, and the hope that it will not long delay to put in practice a system of instruction which is demanded by the example of all foreign and even of some American colleges, and therefore by a regard for its honor as the oldest medical school in the United States. This hope is no longer vague and unfounded; it begins to assume shape and consistence, and to show that it rests upon the firm conviction of a large number of physicians who are among the most accomplished, earnest, and efficient supporters, not of this school alone, but of the still higher school of universal American medicine. They know, and every year they perceive more clearly, that the sphere of medicine is rapidly enlarging, and that an attempt to restrict its study within the old-fashioned term is not only impossible but absurd. They know equally well that the established hap-hazard fashion of studying it, without systematic development and subordination of parts, defeats the very objects of its study, and tends to discourage feeble students and disgust the well-educated. They know that medical pretenders, without honor themselves, are filching honor and health from their deluded victims. They know that in medicine, as in other professions, there is a tendency to cut loose from the principles which have hitherto saved the State from anarchy, and society from dissolution; that every smatterer presumes to pronounce judicially upon subject he is least acquainted with, and that in the midst of this chaos of crude opinions, this clamorous tumult of the ignorant, the vulgar, and presumptuous, the most precious fruits of human wisdom, and the very foundations of human faith,