Page:Introductory lecture delivered at the Middlesex Hospital, October 1st, 1877 (IA b22447258).pdf/17

17 for if you work as you should at anatomy and physiology I have no fear for the rest. As students you will, of course, receive without doubt much that you are taught as absolutely true and certain. But you should never fail to ascertain the reasons for believing what you are told where it is not self-evident. By this method you will be best training yourselves for duties which will come later in life.

Learn to place facts in the one scale and theory in the other. We may liken facts in science to pure gold, which theory shapes and moulds into the forms best suited to the mind and the need of each age.

You cannot value facts too highly, you may easily over-rate the importance of theories.

Remember that the best kind of knowledge is not gained in the lecture-room or in the study, but in the dissecting-room, the post-mortem room, and in the hospital ward.

Such knowledge is a life-long possession. It may grow dim, but it is never forgotten. It is always there, and has been well-likened "to the inscription on a battered and defaced coin" ready to come out whenever you warm it.

Contrasting our own profession, the profession of medicine with the other so-called learned professions, it must be obvious, I think, to all of you that, whilst the faculties and powers of the mind are exercised alike in all, the special cultivation of the senses is necessary in ours alone. Those senses which are the avenues through which alone a knowledge of the outer world flows into and