The annual discourse before the Philadelphia County Medical Society : delivered February 10, 1852 / by the President, Samuel Jackson.

  • Jackson, Samuel, 1787-1872.
Date:
1852
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The annual discourse before the Philadelphia County Medical Society : delivered February 10, 1852 / by the President, Samuel Jackson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    late Dr. Wistar received his first impulse from the pleasure he found, when a boy, in administering to the wounded after the battle of Germantown; and I presume there are very few edu- cated physicians who cannot call to mind a similar impression. This spirit increases with his years and gains strength by use, until it is gradually blunted by ingratitude and other obtund- ing disappointments. These operate with a force proportioned to the sensibility of the unfortunate young man, who has set out in life with the romantic hope of supplying all his own wants by attending to the wants of his afflicted brethren, appealing to his own soul, like the benevolent Chremes to Menedemus—I am a man and no stranger to the cries of humanity.* A youthful spirit, thus nobly endowed, sets out in life with almost unlimited confidence in the honesty and benevolence of man, also with the animating hope of relieving the distresses of grateful patients ; but, alas, too soon he is confounded by every species of dishonesty, prevarication, and falsehood; by the hardheartedness and even cruelty of his fellow man. His observ- ations and collisions continuing from year to year, he must be more than human if he do not gradually lose a portion of his primitive respect for the objects of his youthful kindness. There is a point at which no man, however good and meek he may be, can be goaded and injured without some recalcitration, some feeling of resentment which cannot fail to be swelled by con- tinual repetition. Here, then, I would say to every young man, have your soul prepared for temptation, for you stand on the brink of an awful precipice and of everlasting ruin. Unless you successfully resist temptation, you may be driven insensibly into the broad road of misanthropy, and thus become wretched for life. There is no man so happy as he who loves mankind. To be repeatedly tempted, then, till the mind is perverted in its natural warmth of affection, thus rendered cold and apathetic, is certainly the greatest evil that can happen to any man. This is the very temptation to which physicians, above all other men, are perpetually liable. They witness poor human nature in all its worst and most disgusting phases ; they are often unworthily * Homo sxim—liumani nihil a me alienum puto.—Terent. Ileautont. Act I. Sc. 1.