Page:Restorative medicine - an Harveian annual oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, on June 21, 1871 (the 210th anniversary) (IA restorativemedic00cham).pdf/42

28 RESTORATIVE MEDICINE. What training does the medical student go through which shall enable him to use his franchise? cannot but say that those of us who are teachers in schools have greatly failed of our duties in this respect. I have never yet, as examiner, come across a candidate for diploma, instructed in the art of systematically observing and recording the action of medicines. What an awful waste of raw material is here! Surely the chairs of materia medica would be better employed in training a class how to observe, than in discussing varieties of Cinchona bark or the shape of Senna leaves; a kind of knowledge which no one ever really gets from lectures, but if he requires it, either from a book or a warehouse.

To the court of experience we are one and all of us called as jurors, but more especially those who have the privilege of hospital practice. The duty of aiding in the decision of these questions, by communicating the knowledge gained from our patients, is one that cannot be evaded, and is incumbent upon us to the end of our lives. It can no more be thrown off than can the obligations of a crown, or of inherited wealth. I have sometimes been asked how it is that medical men seldom retire, and usually die in harness; and 1 say