334 THOMAS YOUNG. 



or at Worthing, where he passed the sea-bathing season, 

 any extended practice. The public found him, in fact, 

 too scientific. We must also avow that his public lec- 

 tures on medicine, those, for instance, which he deliv- 

 ered at St. George's Hospital, were generally but ill- 

 attended. It has been said, to explain this, that his 

 lectures were too dry, too full of matter, and that they 

 were beyond the apprehension of ordinary understandings. 

 But might not the want of success be rather ascribed to 

 the freedom, not very common, with which Young 

 pointed out the inextricable difficulties which encounter 

 us at every step in the study of the numerous disorders 

 of our frail machine ? 



Would any one expect at Paris, and especially in an 

 age when every one seeks to attain his end quickly and 

 without labour, that a professor of the faculty would 

 retain many auditors if he were to commence with these 

 words, which I borrow literally from Dr. Young : — 



" No study is so complicated as that of medicine ; it 

 exceeds the limits of human intelligence. Those physi- 

 cians who precipitately go on without trying to compre- 

 hend what they observe, are often just as much advanced 

 as those who give themselves up to generalizations 

 hastily made on observations in regard to which all 

 analogy is at fault." And if the Professor, continuing 

 in the same style, should add, " In the lottery of medi- 

 cine the chances of the possessor of ten tickets must 

 evidently be greater than those of the possessor of five," 

 — when they believed themselves engaged in a lottery, 

 would those of his auditors whom the first phrase had 

 not driven away, be at all disposed to make any great 

 efforts to procure for themselves more tickets, or, to 

 explain the meaning of our Professor — the greatest 

 amount of knowledge possible ? 



