No medical teacher or practitioner of eminence was ever more ready to acknowledge the imperfection of his art, more distrustful of medical theories, or even of the alleged results of medical practice, when not in accordance with his own experience, or more careless of posthumous reputation. But none was ever more solicitous to give, both to his pupils and his patients, the full benefit of those principles of medical science, of the truth and importance of which he himself was convinced; and on this account his professional character had assumed, long before his death, a superiority over most of his contemporaries, of which those who judge of it only from his own contributions to medical science or literature cannot form an adequate conception.*

*From the Encyclopædia Britannica.

66. TO THE VENERABLE THE POSTMASTER IN THE KINGDOM OF THE DEAD.*

"How difficult it must be, notwithstanding the most exemplary official arrangements, to forward letters to their right address, when the Christian name is not written at length, and the year of death also given, is a fact of which I am fully aware, since one cannot reasonably expect the postmen in your department should be more accurate or more fertile in conjecture than that scrupulously careful man of letters on earth, who confounded Dr. John Gregory the author of Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician,' who died in 1773, with Dr. James Gregory the author of the 'Conspectus Medicinæ Theoretica.' I take the liberty, therefore, respectfully to mention that I mean the latter only; he will be the more easily identified when I add that he, as long as he lived in Edinburgh, was not only mentally but physically a great man; and that, in the year 1794, in the general burst of loyalty which distinguished that time, he assumed the musket of a common grenadier.

"I have the honour to be, &c."

* See Lucan's Dialogues.-ED.

LETTER TO DR. JAMES GREGORY.

"You have, doubtless, never regretted that you yourself laboured so hard in Aberdeen, Oxford, and Edinburgh, to acquire a classical education. In all such fundamental attempts the roots are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

"It is only when it is presented in a perfect form that an able opinion gives satisfaction, and outlasts its own time. Your elegant Latin did not less contribute to your fame, and if your name is still remembered, it is chiefly as the name of one who was a model of excellence in that respect.

"It is justly said that style is the man, and as a noble form indicates a noble mind, so a finished mode of expression leads us to anticipate the results of thought and study.

As in your time a medical author who wrote with ease, and so as to be intelligible and attractive to the non-medical, was exceedingly scarce, so is it no less the case in our time; and it is on this account that I have undertaken to lay before you my complaint by letter, in the hope of obtaining from you some consolation.

"At the temple of the Delphic Apollo stood, as you well know, this inscription in golden letters,- Know thyself,' a plain intimation to the votaries that the true Pythia dwelt within them. Inquiries of this household oracle are, however, more rare than ever; men, in general, come too seldom to inquire of themselves, and youth especially, between dissipation and varieties of study, scarcely attain to any self-intercourse.

"The requirements of science are too many; the requirements for its thorough mastery and the elegance of its garb too few. A certain quantum of knowledge is

exacted, its quality is left free. The machine goes on very regularly; the schools send forth, from their examinations, finished youths, and the university, their doctores medicina rite promotus, that is, complete masters of their profession.

"Every one runs towards his end, and every one is glad to get ahead of other runners; meanwhile the pressure of the mass becomes greater, and the difficulty of attracting attention is, to each individual, proportionally increased. Population grows and, through the greater facilities of communication, boundaries approach each other; one discovery presses on the heels of another, and the steam-press scatters, like a volcano, a ceaseless stream of excitement in all directions.

"He who keeps himself on the stretch has enough to do; care for his own existence leaves no sacrifice for anything else.

"In ordinary life this may be rightly arranged, but how in science, and especially in medical science?

"Should not the physician, who has exclusively to deal with the individual, concentrate the whole force of his intellect and talents upon the Individual? To his knowledge and character the problem appears given, not only in the circle of eternal change to detect the quiet spirit, but also to remain himself calm, and labour after perfection in the individual.

"Medicine extends itself into the boundless; and in proportion as journeys into new parts of the world enlarge the materia medica, as chemistry supplies the laboratory with new methods, and the microscope can exhibit for physiology and pathology the smallest objects, the physician must strive after the concentration and perfection of each individual subject.

"The school has to make a beginning for this purpose;

the ideal of duty can only arise from the satisfaction of daily duty, out of the necessity of an equal cultivation in the Real and Formal.

"Who can bear a clearer testimony than yourself to the necessity and the reward of private industry in the study of the great masters, and the attempt to develop right conceptions clearly and simply?

"The Dutch Hippocrates, whom one cannot certainly reproach with partiality to a regular education, was, in a great part, self-educated; his teachers were especially the ancients, and his wonderful influence on his generation and on posterity was attained principally through the weight of a polite and liberal education. When, therefore, the scholar invokes panem et circenses, and desires there should be given him only what is indispensable to subsistence, and all as light as child's play, there is no scope left to the well-qualified teacher.

"There is no reason to fear that the study of medicine will become a torus medicatus, or even Graham's celestial bed; yet it is made too easy by the aid of manuals of therapeutics, which resemble a chrestomathy* or anthology, alphabetical encyclopædias, and works on physiology, surgery, practical medicine, illustrated like children's books with pictures. The only parts of a man's head which are brought into practice are his eyes, and where a picture can represent an object no thought is required.

"At no time has so much labour been bestowed upon the outside, that superficial organ, and with so much satisfaction, as at the present. But if the question is about the exterior, and the skin, and the raiment, we may also think

* It is called in the Commentariolus de Vitae cursu propria Boerhaavii manu conscriptus (in Burton's Life of Hermann Boerhaave,' London, 1746, p. 207): "Est forsan incredibile nullum a nostro medicinae auditum professorem, nisi cl. Drelincurtium paucis vicibus paulo ante fata."