AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS. 
659 
only is pursued, and reliance is placed on a few months’ grinding 
for professional information, a diploma may be obtained, but success 
in after-life and peace of mind will be utterly unattainable. The 
man who does not study with the stimulus of his examinations 
before him, and surrounded by all the incentives of a student’s life, 
will not study at a later period. He will remain ignorant, with, 
perhaps, just enough knowledge to perceive his deficiencies. To 
such an one, practice is a state of purgatory, unless, by a dint of 
blunders, in the course of years, he either acquire a kind of practical 
acquaintance with the symptoms and treatment of disease, if not 
with disease itself, or otherwise become hardened in his ignorance, 
and reckless of its consequences. 
The task of the student who makes his first appearance on the 
field of action is more difficult. He arrives, as it were, in a terra 
incognita , and has every thing to find out, every thing to arrange, 
with reference to his sojourn in town. The most important point 
to determine is the school at which he intends to study. But this 
is one which is generally decided before he leaves home, and very 
properly so, as the elements of a decision are as easily obtained in 
the country as in town, and as it is very desirable that on a student’s 
arrival his plans should be all carefully laid down, so that it may 
merely be necessary to carry them into execution. It would, 
therefore, be of but little avail to point out the comparative merits 
of the different schools, even were such a course not a deviation 
from that impartiality which, with us, is a law. The organization 
of the various schools is fully developed in the student’s part of the 
present number, and it remains for the students, and for their 
medical friends and preceptors, to exercise their discretion. There 
is, however, one caution which we must enforce ; which is, that 
no school should be chosen which does not afford ample oppor- 
tunities for clinical instruction, and that students should be careful 
that the scenes of their lectures and hospital studies are sufficiently 
near to each other to prevent unnecessary loss of time in going 
from one to the other. There is one exception which may be 
made to this latter rule. For the sake of exercise, one of the 
evening or early morning lectures might be attended at a little 
distance from the centre of exertion. A walk could thus be 
arranged for the morning or evening without interfering with the 
business of the day. 
The student who comes to London to walk the hospitals, as 
the term is, must remember that he has not come for pleasure, but 
for study. Indeed, it is as well that he should know that if he 
performs his duty to himself and to society, the effort which he 
will have to make will be greater than any which he has hitherto 
