Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/459

 which public hospitals contribute far beyond what private practice, however extensive, can ever effect, and from which the rich ultimately benefit so signally.

In hospitals, the field of coincident observation is far wider; opportunity is afforded for viewing, simultaneously, several instances of the same disease; of noticing their similitudes and discrepancies; of watching their progress so as to mark the ordinary and natural course of symptoms distinct from those contingencies which so often obscure them; of observing the effects of remedies, and the power of sustaining their operation; of thus determining what remedies are, in cases of emergency, most worthy of reliance. In hospitals, too, the law of the physician is more absolute; his orders are punctually obeyed; neither weakness nor perverseness counteracts his matured purpose, and thus, in hospital practice alone, perhaps, has he fair opportunity afforded him for proving of what his art is capable. It needs little reflection to see that observations of disease so made, must lead to more accurate discrimination, sounder judgment, and more efficient treatment than mere private practice, subject, as it is, to continual influences, tending to give it a wrong direction, can ever teach. From all this it follows that the knowledge acquired in hospital practice, extends its benefits far beyond the sphere of its immediate objects, repaying a ten-fold interest to those by whose liberality public hospitals are supported.

So fully did the governors of the Bedford infirmary discern these truths, and concur in Dr. Thackeray's views, that in October, 1830, they voted an annual grant of £lO from the funds of the hospital, for the