Page:Introductory lecture delivered at the Middlesex Hospital, October 1st, 1877 (IA b22447258).pdf/13

13 when you can. Sir Charles Bell, Seymour Haden, Henry Monro Chambers, and Solly, have shown you the way, and if you do not follow, when you are older you will make bad diagrams and will be worse lecturers than you might have been.”

But the art of drawing has a far more practical bearing. I believe it may be a great aid to a medical man throughout his whole professional career. It would take up too much of your time to cite instances in proof of this, and happily these are too evident to escape those who consider the subject, but I may remark, that a careful drawing of a well prepared dissection or a microscopical preparation may save hours of book drudgery, and must lead to clear and accurate ideas. To the busy practitioner the rapid sketch of a morbid growth or the mere outline of a diseased limb may convey to the mind more than pages of careful notes.

To those who teach good diagrams are absolutely essential, and none are so good as those fresh from the hand of the teacher himself.

Drawing may be said pre-eminently to cultivate the eye as to form, size and relation; and it certainly educates the touch in a manner scarcely second to the use of the scalpel in the dissecting room. When it is remembered that, in many surgical operations, the knife is carried in curves or in straight lines, surely it must be some satisfaction to the surgeon to feel that his eye has been previously educated in these things and will safely guide his hand.

I make bold to hope that instruction in the art of