Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/70



The following passage in the last Edinburgh Review, as evidence of the public ignorance just alluded to, is so apposite that I am tempted to quote it. It occurs in the article on Dr. Thompson's life of Cullen, p. 462. “Of all subjects of scientific interest, men, in general, seem to have the weakest curiosity in regard to the structure and functions of their own bodies. So it is now, and, however marvellous, so it has ever been. 'Eunt homines,' says St. Austen, 'mirari alta montium, ingentes fluctus maris, altissimos lapsus fluminum, oceani ambitum et gyros siderum,─seipsos relinquunt, nec mirantur' For one amateur physiologist, we meet a hundred dilettanti chemists, and botanists, and mineralogists, and geologists. Even medical men themselves, are, in general, equally careless and incompetent judges as the public at large, of all high accomplishments in their profession. Medicine they cultivate not as a science, but a trade; are indifferent to all that transcends the sphere of vulgar practice, and affect to despise what they are unable to appreciate.” Let us hope that the latter part of this pasquinade only shews the ignorance of the reviewer, and that it does not truly characterize the profession. Some ground for the imputation there may be, but, if so, it results not from the general profession being liable to such a charge, but from its best energies being repressed and obscured by the manifold disadvantages under which it labours. Such is the public ignorance of professional merits, that individuals acquire a prominence which, in a more enlightened state of the public intellect, they could never attain. These bring discredit on a profession which, if its