3
period of "more than thirty years!" for we find that, from that date, there has been an almost constant decrease in the number of "petitions for seats" in each succeeding year; and this is mainly attributable to the circumstances here specified, and not from any want of zeal on the part of its members, as some have foolishly imagined.
From this state of embarrassment we are happily emerging; and the especial object for which we are this evening met, namely, "The Inauguration of the New Hall of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh," will ever hereafter be regarded as an important era in its history.
If, gentlemen, the old Hall, shortly after its erection, was pronounced from the Chair to be "a grand phenomenon of medical ardour," what words shall sufficiently characterise the magnificence of palace in which we are now assembled?
We will not further detain you with desultory comments on the suitability of the means now placed at our disposal. It behoves us rather to urge upon you the necessity of exerting your most strenuous efforts in the cause so ably advocated by our predecessors. We have received a thousand pleasures and advantages from their disinterested endeavours, and it is incumbent on us, and on every generation succeeding us, to enhance the value and reputation of this institution to the latest ages.
The grand objects of this Society are:—Mutual improvement and the investigation of truth; the development of the seeds of genius, and the detection of falsehood; the emancipation of the mind from the fetters of prejudice, and the cultivation of true friendship by social and liberal intercourse.
Such were the views and feelings of the founders of this Society; and the happy effects of it upon their character and conduct have been fully proved, not only by their own testimony, but by that of their distinguished successors, many of whom honour us with their presence this evening; and we venture to appeal to their experience, and to point to their position, as bearing ample testimony to the justice of these remarks.
We look to your exertions, gentlemen, as the guarantee of future success. Do not be slothful because it is often argued that merit cannot always ensure a corresponding reward. The insufficiency of merit and of honest endeavours to the acquisition of fame and fortune, will doubtless give occasion to the discontented to repine and to censure the economy of human affairs; but they who are conversant in the investigation of final causes easily perceive that such a dispensation tends to perfect virtue by the exercise of patience. There are those who enter on the practice of our art totally destitute of preparatory instruction, and who make a merit of their defect. Without even those few lights which may be occasionally obtained in the course of a servile apprenticeship, they assume all the importance of sufficiency, and dictate with an oracular confidence. Against those vultures of mankind, against those harpies of society, who scatter pain and death around, under pretence of affording relief, and who, for the sake of supporting an unbecoming parade in life, not only delude, but destroy those who apply to them as friends under the pressure of the heaviest calamities, every honest mind must feel an indignant sentiment.[1]
- ↑ Vicesimus Knox.
