INTRODUCTORY DKCTU 11K. 
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benevolence, he must be possessed of religious principle; and 
these, the two cardinal virtues of a good man, must be girt about 
with unswerving uprightness and conscientiousness. These prin- 
ciples beget industry, for their lustre is wanting without the activity 
which gives them exercise : they beget perseverance ; while 
conscientiousness enforces punctuality and the rigorous fulfil- 
ment of duty. These, then, Gentlemen, are the qualities neces- 
sary to constitute an honourable and estimable member of the 
medical profession. The standard is lofty, you may mentally 
exclaim. You may feel inclined to ask, Can no fragment be 
dispensed with? The answer is. None. Without all, we are 
unworthy members of a noble profession ; we are that which we 
should despise in others : let us, therefore, cast the eye of strict 
scrutiny inwards upon ourselves. 
Turning from the first part of a medical education, the ethics 
of medicine, the shaping of our character to a living model of in- 
tegrity and uprightness ; we may next direct our attention to the 
intellectual man, to the studies which constitute the basis of our 
science. 
Our first studies commence with our schoolboy-days: we are 
early made acquainted with the admirable writings of the Greeks 
and of the Romans, and our minds are therein made to receive a 
bias that tends to an extent beyond belief to the refinement of 
our manners and future character. The cast-iron and wooden 
days have happily passed away, when the human mind in its 
infant state was bruised into form by physical force by dint of 
hard belabouring of its external case with the instructor’s ferule, 
while the fathomless dictionary and the mysterious grammar were 
its only and its miserable assistance. Quitting the path of 
dreamy ignorance, instructors of modern days pursue the practice 
which Nature herself indicates as the true mode of acquiring 
learning which Nature employs in teaching to infants their mother 
tongue. They teach ideas, ideas dressed in the most attractive 
and agreeable forms ; and when ideas have been attained, they 
furnish us with rules and laws by which those ideas are to be 
arranged, and new ideas created at our will. By this means 
the labours of older and abler heads are made available to the 
young and unpractised in thought; the studies of a year are con- 
centrated into the focus of a week ; and learning, once the bane 
of budding intelligence, is rendered agreeable and pleasant. A 
good classical substratum is most valuable and important in 
medicine ; and if any of my hearers should have cause to deplore 
the tenuity of their resources in this respect, let them take cou- 
rage in the reflection that it is never too late to begin. 
The medical apprenticeship of five years, required by the Ex- 
