The connection of chemistry and medicine : address at the opening of the medical classes, Tuesday, October 21st, 1890 / by John Ferguson, M.A., LL.D., F.S.A., Regius Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow.

  • Ferguson, John, 1838-1916.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The connection of chemistry and medicine : address at the opening of the medical classes, Tuesday, October 21st, 1890 / by John Ferguson, M.A., LL.D., F.S.A., Regius Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    different. Hitherto you may have taken state- ments on trust from books ; now you have your- selves to undergo the discipline of observation of the actual phenomena. You will very soon find that no amount of telling, no amount of reading, can be substituted for your own personal cog- nizance of those phenomena. The labour involved in this mode of learning is so great, the apparent progress is so slow, the field of scientific knowledge to be gone over is so vast, the time at your disposal is so brief, that I can understand and sympathize with the student who, after a steady trial of a few weeks, after the first novelty of the subject is worn off, after discovering that his capacity for this kind of study is less than he supposed, that in short his scientific, and perhaps real education, is just be- ginning, is conscious of despair of ever succeeding at all. The other novelty which the student has to face is the character of the subjects themselves. He is taken away from the study of words and litera- ture ancient and modern, of history and biography, of newspapers, fiction, and politics, to learn what has been discovered in the world of nature. It has been impressed on him by critics and philo- sophers that the proper study of mankind is man, and that there is nothing great in man but mind, and he is inclined, it may be, to look disparagingly on