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Some, it is said, have thought, that I have described the difficulties of attaining to the knowledge of physic in too strong terms, and have enumerated so many qualifications as requisite to acquire any considerable knowledge of the medical art, that I rather deter students, than encourage them in attempting to compleat their studies and to become skillful in their profession.
To these I reply, that I have been far from exaggerating, matters, and have left much unsaid, on purpose to avoid discouraging their eager pursuit. If we cannot arrive at absolute perfection in science, let us not abandon ourselves to a criminal indolence, but strive to approach that degree of knowledge which is attainable by industry, and we cannot fail of being eminently skillful in the healing art and highly useful to mankind.
Others, I am informed, as if they were afraid of engaging in too great an expence, have said that I have insisted too much on the necessity of students attending lectures in every different branch of medicine. They seem to imagine if they hear lectures upon Anatomy only, the branch which I have first mentioned in my discourse, that they can easily make themselves masters of all the other branches of medicine by reading. I blush for those who thus
