A Dissertation on the Puerperal Fever/Introduction

by Pierre de Sales Laterrière

 

IT is not without diffidence that I appear before this honourable and reverend Assembly, in conformity to the laudable custom established in the University.

To produce a dissertation in a language I have never professedly studied, before I entered these walls, is not so easy a talk as some perhaps may imagine: but relying on that candor which distinguishes a polite education, I am emboldened to offer you this specimen of my studies, hoping that every deficiency of language will be excused.

I shall say a few words for the information of those who may wonder to see a person of my age engaging in the study of Physic. The occasion of it is this;—Canada, like most provinces at a great distance from the mother country, has become very deficient in medical knowledge. Not only the most approved English authors are unknown to most of us, but even the late French writers on physic and surgery are scarcely seen among us.

Ignorance and quackery having, from these and some other causes, spread among us, to the great detriment of the lives of his Britannic Majesty's subjects, it excited the attention of the legislature, and particularly of the humane Lord Dorchester, who, touched with a tender feeling for the sufferings of others, issued an Ordonnance, obliging every practitioner to undergo an examination before a committee of physicians and members of the legislative council.

The result of this plan was,—A certain number having been examined, were approved, and permitted to go on in practice: a number were rejected as unqualified, and prohibited practising; and some were passed conditionally, that is, they were recommended to pass some time at any university, where medicine was taught with regularity, according to the most improved British systems.

Finding myself included among the last, I took from the register's office what concerned myself only, and set off for the University of Cambridge, which had been strongly recommended to me as a medical school, where I could obtain every thing the ordonnance required of me.

Although I had formed an high idea of the University of Cambridge, and of the medical lectures in particular, yet I am happy in declaring that they far exceed my most sanguine expectations, and I shall account those circumstances, which I once was ready to conceive as grievances, among the most fortunate events of my life, inasmuch as they have made me acquainted with a set of truly learned men, whose urbanity, as well as abilities, I shall never cease to revere.