Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th 1887 (IA b30475958).pdf/20

 seven years' standing, I feel I can often detect book knowledge and parrot-like iteration of catchwords learned by rote but not thought out in some voluble but superficial candidate. Indeed, Charles Dickens and Albert Smith (the latter a medical student himself, both acute observers of human nature) have each pilloried flagrant offenders in this direction with the severity and incisiveness of real humour. To these book-read anatomists and schoolboard paradoxists an admirable answer is given in the words, “ Cutt vp as much as may be in præsentiâ, ut cum Historiâ peritia innotescat.” That, with the description, practical experience should arise.

But it is not only the superficial and sciolistic learner who may gather lessons from this remarkable page; there is much that we as lecturers and teachers may take to heart with advantage. “To supply only by speech what cannot be shewn on your own credit and by authority”; also, “observationes proprias et alienas recensere, ad confirmandam propriam opinionem.”

There is often, even at the present day, much