All knowledge is good. It is impossible to say that any fragment of
knowledge, however insignificant or remote from one's ordinary pursuits,
may not some day be turned to account. But in medical education, above
all things, it is to be recollected that, in order to know a little
well, one must be content to be ignorant of a great deal.
Let it not be supposed that I am proposing to narrow medical education,
or, as the cry is, to lower the standard of the profession. Depend upon
it there is only one way of really ennobling any calling, and that is to
make those who pursue it real masters of their craft, men who can truly
do that which they profess to be able to do, and which they are credited
with being able to do by the public. And there is no position so ignoble
as that of the so-called "liberally-educated practitioner," who, as
Talleyrand said of his physician, "Knows everything, even a little
physic;" who may be able to read Galen in the original; who knows all
the plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall; but
who finds himself, with the issues of life and death in his hands,
ignorant, blundering, and bewildered, because of his ignorance of the
essential and fundamental truths upon which practice must be based.
Pages:
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116