Page:Introductory lecture delivered in the Adelaide Hospital, Dublin, at the commencement of the clinical course, October 31, 1864 (IA b21916433).pdf/9

9 when, either as a part of general education, or as an avenue to social rank and distinction, men will think it worth their while to spend time in hospital attendance. In other professions such an event not unfrequently occurs. Multitudes enter the army who never dream of buckling on their armour in actual war; and others eat their dinners in the Inns of Court, who are never subsequently seen with a bag of briefs in the hall of justice. The subsidiary advantages presented by these professions to those embracing them, accounts for the difference; but the votaries of Esculapius have nothing to attract them to his shrine but what springs from the service itself. Yet I cannot help thinking, in opposition to the opinions generally entertained by the public and the profession, that a more general diffusion among the community of a knowledge of the true principles of medical treatment would be attended with beneficial results. Not to mention emergencies that are liable to happen in remote quarters of the globe, how often do occasions arise at home of sudden and severe illness, when no skilled assistance is within reach, when the bystanders, in their anxiety to do something that may be useful, unfortunately fall into the mistake of doing the very opposite of what they ought to have done; so that when the expected aid arrives, he finds the patient actually injured by their well-meant but injudicious interference? To me it appears that this is the only effective way of putting down quackery. Legislative enactments cannot do it, neither can exclusion from medical corporations. So far as legitimate medicine has yet triumphed over the boasted presumptions of irregular practitioners, the victory has been due to the increasing intelligence of the community. The credulity of the multitude springs from their ignorance—remove this, and the field in which quackery flourishes, as weeds do in a neglected farm, will cease to yield its accustomed harvest.

I am not in the least afraid that a more general diffusion of a knowledge of medicine among the people would be of the least disadvantage to the profession. At present we have often to complain of the injury done to our patients,