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Spare Hours. Brown John
Читать онлайн.Название Spare Hours
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isbn http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27153
Автор произведения Brown John
Жанр Зарубежная классика
Издательство Public Domain
But it may be asked, how are the brains to be strengthened, the sense quickened, the genius awakened, the affections raised – the whole man turned to the best account for the cure of his fellow-men? How are you, when physics and physiology are increasing so marvellously, and when the burden of knowledge, the quantity of transferable information, of registered facts, of current names – and such names! – is so infinite: how are you to enable a student to take all in, bear up under all, and use it as not abusing it, or being abused by it? You must invigorate the containing and sustaining mind, you must strengthen him from within, as well as fill him from without; you must discipline, nourish, edify, relieve, and refresh his entire nature; and how? We have no time to go at large into this, but we will indicate what we mean: – encourage languages, especially French and German, at the early part of their studies; encourage not merely the book knowledge, but the personal pursuit of natural history, of field botany, of geology, of zoology; give the young, fresh, unforgetting eye, exercise and free scope upon the infinite diversity and combination of natural colors, forms, substances, surfaces, weights, and sizes – everything, in a word, that will educate their eye or ear, their touch, taste, and smell, their sense of muscular resistance; encourage them by prizes, to make skeletons, preparations, and collections of any natural objects; and, above all, try and get hold of their affections, and make them put their hearts into their work. Let them, if possible, have the advantage of a regulated tutorial, as well as the ordinary professorial system. Let there be no excess in the number of classes and frequency of lectures. Let them be drilled in composition; by this we mean the writing and spelling of correct, plain English (a matter not of every-day occurrence, and not on the increase), – let them be directed to the best books of the old masters in medicine, and examined in them, – let them be encouraged in the use of a wholesome and manly literature. We do not mean popular or even modern literature – such as Emerson, Bulwer, or Alison, or the trash of inferior periodicals or novels – fashion, vanity, and the spirit of the age, will attract them readily enough to all these; we refer to the treasures of our elder and better authors. If our young medical student would take our advice, and for an hour or two twice a week take up a volume of Shakspeare, Cervantes, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Montaigne, Addison, Defoe, Goldsmith, Fielding, Scott, Charles Lamb, Macaulay, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Helps, Thackeray, &c., not to mention authors on deeper and more sacred subjects – they would have happier and healthier minds, and make none the worse doctors. If they, by good fortune – for the tide has set in strong against the literæ humaniores– have come off with some Greek or Latin, we would supplicate for an ode of Horace, a couple of pages of Cicero or of Pliny once a month, and a page of Xenophon. French and German should be mastered either before or during the first years of study. They will never afterwards be acquired so easily or so thoroughly, and the want of them may be bitterly felt when too late.
But one main help, we are persuaded, is to be found in studying, and by this we do not mean the mere reading, but the digging into and through, the energizing upon, and mastering such books as we have mentioned at the close of this paper. These are not, of course, the only works we would recommend to those who wish to understand thoroughly, and to make up their minds, on these great subjects as wholes; but we all know too well that our Art is long, broad, and deep, – and Time, opportunity, and our little hour, brief and uncertain, therefore, we would recommend those books as a sort of game of the mind, a mental exercise – like cricket, a gymnastic, a clearing of the eyes of their mind as with euphrasy, a strengthening their power over particulars, a getting fresh, strong views of worn out, old things, and, above all, a learning the right use of their reason, and by knowing their own ignorance and weakness, finding true knowledge and strength. Taking up a book like Arnauld, and reading a chapter of his lively, manly sense, is like throwing your manuals, and scalpels, and microscopes, and natural (most unnatural) orders out of your hand and head, and taking a game with the Grange Club, or a run to the top of Arthur Seat. Exertion quickens your pulse, expands your lungs, makes your blood warmer and redder, fills your mouth with the pure waters of relish, strengthens and supples your legs; and though on your way to the top you may encounter rocks, and baffling débris, and gusts of fierce winds rushing out upon you from behind corners, just as you will find in Arnauld, and all truly serious and honest books of the kind, difficulties and puzzles, winds of doctrine, and deceitful mists; still you are rewarded at the top by the wide view. You see, as from a tower, the end of all. You look into the perfections and relations of things. You see the clouds, the bright lights and the everlasting hills on the far horizon. You come down the hill a happier, a better, and a hungrier man, and of a better mind. But, as we said, you must eat the book, you must crush it, and cut it with your teeth and swallow it; just as you must walk up, and not be carried up the hill, much less imagine you are there, or look upon a picture of what you would see were you up, however accurately or artistically done; no – you yourself must do both.
Philosophy – the love and the possession of wisdom – is divided into two things, science or knowledge; and a habit, or power of mind. He who has got the first is not truly wise unless his mind has reduced and assimilated it, as Dr. Prout would have said, unless he appropriates and can use it for his need.
The prime qualifications of a physician may be summed up in the words Capax, Perspicax, Sagax, Efficax. Capax– there must be room to receive, and arrange, and keep knowledge; Perspicax– senses and perceptions, keen, accurate, and immediate, to bring in materials from all sensible things; Sagax– a central power of knowing what is what, and what it is worth, of choosing and rejecting, of judging; and finally, Efficax– the will and the way – the power to turn all the other three – capacity, perspicacity, sagacity, to account, in the performance of the thing in hand, and thus rendering back to the outer world, in a new and useful form, what you had received from it. These are the intellectual qualities which make up the physician, without any one of which he would be mancus, and would not deserve the name of a complete artsman, any more than proteine would be itself if any one of its four elements were amissing.
We have left ourselves no room to speak of the books we have named at the end of this paper. We recommend them all to our young readers. Arnauld’s excellent and entertaining Art of Thinking– the once famous Port-Royal Logic – is, if only one be taken, probably the best. Thomson’s little book is admirable, and is specially suited for a medical student, as its illustrations are drawn with great intelligence and exactness from chemistry and physiology. We know nothing more perfect than the analysis, at page 348, of Sir H. Davy’s beautiful experiments to account for the traces of an alkali, found when decomposing water by galvanism. It is quite exquisite, the hunt after and the unearthing of “the residual cause.” This book has the great advantage of a clear, lively, and strong style. We can only give some short extracts.
“We may define the inductive method as the process of discovering laws and rules from facts, and causes from effects; and the deductive, as the method of deriving facts from laws, and effects from their causes.”
There is a valuable paragraph on anticipation and its uses – there is a power and desire of the mind to project itself from the known into the unknown, in the expectation of finding what it is in search of.
“This power of divination, this sagacity, which is the mother of all science,