Address TO THE STUDENTS OF THE MEDICAL SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, BRISTOL.

JUNE

Address TO THE

STUDENTS OF THE MEDICAL SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, BRISTOL. Delivered after the Distribution of

Prizes, May 18th, 1885, BY J. RUSSELL REYNOLDS, M.D., F.R.S. on

FACULTY OF MEDICINE, LADIES, WD f all, let me express, for you and for GENTLEMEN,—First our heartiest congratulations and that means myself, who with those do rejoice"- to those who have 44 rejoicing been successful to-day. This not only because of the prizes that they havegained-although these are good things in themselves, and to be highly prized both now and hereafter, -but because they are marks of good " training" and tests of "strength." There are three things that success in college competitions, or I might say more generally that college competitions put to the test, which it is well to have tried, and that in good time, for they will furnish much guidance for after-life. They may be put thus: (1) strength both of body and mind, and upon that depends much of what people regard as "temper"; (2) the method of study; and (3) the capacity for reproducing, when wanted, the knowledge and the skill that you have acquired. There are two classes of men, especially marked from one another, who compete for prizes; and, as an old examiner in university and in college, you will let me tell you that they are generally quite easily distinguished from each other, and this in both their "written papers" and in their vivd-voce answers to the questions that may be submitted to them. There are great and numerous varieties in the style of answer, but no practised examiner can fail to recognise the difference between the two classes of men that I have mentioned. In the one, the man has been working for the pass or the honour that he wanted to obtain; in the other, the man has been working to gain the knowledge which makes that pass or that honour well deserved. Men of either class may obtain their reward; but the reward of the one is of far higher value to himself and to others than is that of the second, which may sound the same ; but yet be something that neither he, nor others, will care for, when a few months ,have passed. Before I say a few words of congratulation to the unsuccessful, or rather, to those who have run, but "have not obtained the prize," let me, as a much-tried ,examinee, as well as examiner, take this occasion to remind you, both prize-takers and prize-losers, that the element of chance is not without its influence in either pass or honours’ examination. It is as easy to exaggerate as it is to underrate this factor; but it should always be borne in mind. Let no failure be referred to it alone; let no success lead you to ignore it. How it may be in this school of medicine I do not know, but in many schools, both metropolitan and provincial, those who enter upon " competitive" examination are in a small minority; and of this I am quite sure, that the majority, composed of those who never try their strength until they face a court of examiners for a simple pass, deprive themselves of one great and highly important element in their education. If all students practised themselves in the art of expressing themselves well in both written and oral examination, a very much smaller number would, when they come before the examining boards, be "referred again to their studies." No man, until he has tried it, knows usefully how to write the answer to a question without note or reference-book at hand, or to answer swiftly and to the point, vivd voce, a question suddenly put to him, and the character of which he did not in the least expect. To those of you who have not been so successful to-day as you could wish to have been, let me say this, that most likely you have gained for yourselves something better than a "prize." You have learned why you have failed, and such knowledge is of vast importance. You-for men at the same school are very sharp critics and judges of one another-know why others have succeeded and whv vou have not. No. 3223. PROFESSORS

OF THE

-

6, 1885.

Think back for a moment upon the three elements in successful competition-those I mentioned a few moments since : (a) strength and tone of feeling with regard to study. Some are what may be called "languid.’’ They do not use all the power they have, sometimes only a small fraction of it, which they may deem quite sufficient for the occasion. This may be from either flaccidity of moral fibre or from overweening self-confidence. On the other hand, there are some who are over-anxious, and their work is done under a dominating feeling of the fear of failure; and their feeling is often the unwilling father to the fact. This often leads to (b) an error in the method of study, and the greatest of all errors is this: to make the passing of an examination the object of your work, and to substitute it for the " mastery of the matter" you want and ought to obtain. Work done in this frame of mind is invariably and in the main bad work. If it should end in some success, it may lead to "vanity;" if it fails, it carries with it only "vexation of spirit." Again, in referring to (c) the capacity for reproducing, when wanted, the knowledge that you havee already acquired, let me remind you of the presence of two great factors in that which constitutes what is habitually termed " a good memory." There is (1) the storage of information and (2) the faculty of finding what you have stored. Individuals differ widely in the degree to which they are naturally endowed with these faculties, but each The first depends mainly may be increased by education. " attention," the second upon the upon your power of "orderly" manner in which you arrange the materials in your possession." If you try to add to your stores when your power of attention" is weakened, you will send one thing out of your head while you are putting another in, and your brain, like an overcharged popgun, will sometimes lose both shots. By no amount of clever manipulation can you put anything more into any created thing than its capacity can hold. If you pack your carpet-bag to the full, and then jam in something else, the probability is that you cannot lock the bag: you havehurt it or torn it somewhere, and have lost something that you much wished to keep, and probably much more valuable than the last trifle of your " cram." Then think, again, of what it is to pack carefullyi.e., with attention, arranging with foreknowledge of your requirements what you will want first, second, and last, and contrast this with the unordered heaping of things together in a limited space, the impossibility of catching what you want, and the certainty of finally finding that you have, metaphysically, to turn yourself "inside out,’’ and, like a startled parrot, to pour out in unmeaning succession all you know and all that you can say. So, then, if you would have a "good memory," pay attention and be orderly. Practically cultivate these two capacities, and so by concentrating your attention on a sound (it may be stethoscopic), on a something to see (it may be microscopic) ; but do this with both ears and both eyes open : follow through a symphony in the full rush of sound, a single strain or a single instrument, while hearing all the rest; see all that you can see in a landscape, but single out something that you must look for to see at all, and so raise to its highest degree your attentive power. And so with "recollection." Put all things in order, and then close your eyes and ears, and recall all that you have stored, where it is, what it is, why you placed it in this or that other place, and how you may most easily find it-and that will be very often-in the dark. Speaking to all, I would say, generally, that if wehave regard to the three points laid down, pay due regard to the element of "chance," and then add that "unknown quantity," the y, z, of College life, successful and unsuccessful will find that unknown quantity to be very small, and will be able to explain to one another-as they should always be most glad to do--why the race has not more frequently ended in a " dead heat." A single success or failure, be it ever so great, may be the result of the merest chance, but progressive success or failure, year after year, takes them altogether out of the chapter of accidents, and should be the careful study of all. Regard prizes as milestones not as far you have travelled, how goals. They may tell far many are before you, and how far many are behind, and then explain to yourself by careful thought and inquiry why you are where you are. The prize tells you how much you havealready attained; but if it does not tell you also how much more you have to do, it has taught you little. Before 1 leave this subject, let me say to you in Bristol

you how

1024 what I have often said to my pupils in London, that, so far as my knowledge extends, there is nothing laid down by our

great examining bodies which any ordinary student, without either

or fag, could not pass through with perfect and it is an important "if," he will only go on steadily and systematically at his work. The strain for "honours" has often broken men down, and they have to rest and lose their time, and not rarely miss the "pass" that they might have readily obtained. Most thoroughly do "-I admit the differences in degree of capacity for "honour taking among "all sorts and conditions of men." No one can doubt the existence of a "genius" any more than he can that of an utter " fool"; but I think that if in medio tutissimus ibis, you will find the mijority by your side. So let me add a word to some who work too hard-i.e., to do more than they need to do, and, moreover, trouble themselves about it a thousand times more than they ought to do; and I allude to many scores who have broken down in the very faculties they most sorely needed, and to whom I have had to say, " you must go away and rest," rememease

genius

if,

tryI

bering, then,

as

Shakespeare says,-

" As surfeit is the father to much fast, So every scope in the immoderate use Tends to restraint."

And now let me tell you that when you have finished here, and have satisfied college, university, and hall, your real examination begins, and it is one that will last for life. Your examiners will be your patients, and your patients’ friends, and you will find them not more lenient than those you have already passed. But the same qualities which havehelped you now, and until now, will be your helps hereafter in the daily toil of practice. First, you must hold in due regard your strength and temper. "Never," as Edmund Parkes said, "think of your life, but always of your health, which alone can make life useful." You will find much to try, disappoint, and vex you; but you must be firm and of good courage, and you must show your patience when men, like drowning men clutching at straws in their hour of agony, will when safely on the bank, through your energy and skill, give you nothing but a cold shoulder, or grumble at your fee. There is, always remember, another side to this. To many you will be friends for life. There will be homes which will become homes to you, and no event, from the cradle to the grave, will be left unchronicled in their hearts and yours. This, second, will depend mainly upon yourselves and how your way of work has helped or depressed them. You cannot solve the problems of the sick-room in one quarter of your cases by stethoscope, thermometer, or any such like means. It is by knowledge and sympathy that the help is given. Like good actors, you must so throw yourselves into the mental and moral condition of those with whom you have to deal that you think their thoughts and feel their feelings, and so understand their wants and try to fill them. Again, third, your knowledge and your skill must be always ready, not lying in dust-covered books upon your shelves, but always at your fingers’ ends. Success will mainly depend upon yourselves. If it is true that the poet is born, not made, that dogma is quite as true with regard to the physician. You must be men that your patients and their friends can trust, and do so without knowing it. You must be calm, without indifference; , judgmatic, without dogmatism; clear and ready, without rashness; kind, but with both tenderness and firmness. You must always avoid that tenour of mind which I take leave to call " a chronic chorea of ideas." You must go at once and straightly to what you want to say and do, and not let your fancies, your hobbies, and scarcely remembered knowledge come in your way and misdirect the movement that you mean to make, or else you will find that enterprises of great pith and moment"will often " turn awry, and lose the name of action." And here let me caution you against reading much or contributing anything to the ephemeral literature of the day. Hasty generalisation is as easy as it is bad; and many things are being constantly in societies and pamphlets as great and brought forward novelties which you may find well described in surprising such classic works as Watson’s Lectures, the monographs of Williams, of Louis, of Walshe, of Frerichs, of Abercrombie, Rayer, and Andral. Before you enter your profession you should " count the cost." There is no great prize in it. Nothing that approximates the prizes" to be gained in either the Church, the Bar the Army, or the Navy. There are no great "honours""

that you can gain. You may receive the kind and degree of reward that is given to the conveyer of a "despatch," or to a worthy country mayor who has long voted consistently with his party; but you may not look with hopeful eyes for anything beyond. You may die on the battlefield, or be heavily shotted as you sink into the ocean in the darkness; you may be maimed or killed by a lunatic; or be feverstruck in a workhouse, an asylum, or a gaol, where you are doing work that the country has given you to do. There may, perchance, be two or three lines about you in a local paper, the medical press of London may give a short history of your life. You may leave behind you broken hearts in more than your own one sad home; but that is all. There is no adequate recognition of the services of our noble Profession granted by either State or country; but there is one thing to which, when your work here is done, every one of you may attain, and this without rivalry of any sort or to any degree. You may, in the solemn silence of your own heart, in that court of appeal into which none but God Himself can enter, after giving thanks for all the goodness you have received from Him, say your "Nunc Dimittis"; and although you may not hear the sob or the unspoken word, yet you will be followed by the unuttered prayer that all bereaved and sorrowing souls know so well, "Requiescat in pace." But I will not close in this somewhat sombre strain, although it has its bright as well as its darker tones. One of our greatest poets has said," The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring, from an eye That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality."

But yet, although " the night be dark and dreary," and there may be manystarless nights and cheerless dawns," we must remember that the same great poet said, in another place, when glowing with the enthusiasm of growing life, But for the growing youth What soul was his. when, from the naked top "

Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light ? He looked"-

And so let us, from our point gained to day. Look at what may be in store for some of you, or for some who follow you. What that may be I cannot tell; but yet we may, and we should, indulge the h@pe that, in that universal " light "-it may be far, far away in the future,-some onewill live to see the future Edward Jenner, who may have saved, as his great predecessor had done, millions of lives from misery and death, placed somewhere in a niche of honour in our own country instead of in Boulogne, and not be relegated here, in England, from Trafalgar-square to an obscure corner at the far end of the Serpentine, where nursemaids are engaged in keeping erratic children from falling into its stagnant water. Again, that the William Jenner of that far-off day, who may again have so disintegrated the sources of some of our most miserable maladies, and demonstrated, as his illustrious forefather had done, that by deeds of heroic scientific work, such as those now progressing, they are, in the main, "preventable diseases." Further, that the future Edmund Alexander Parkes, who shall have again lightened every soldier’s knapsack, arranged his diet, ventilated field tent and hospital ward, and so saved thousands of the lives of England’s bravest sons and soldiers; and, yet further, that the John Simon of "the coming race;" if there be, again, in one man combined such science, patience, thought, and selfsacrifice-one who shall, again, have protected our shores from enemies more deadly than any that our battalions or our ironclads can oppose ;-then, I say, let us hope that it may be seen that, although these great men of the future may care as little as really great men have ever done for the honours that other and smaller men prize so highly, yet that our country may be the better for having placed them where they ought to be, with all the honour and glory that is their due, and which will, let us hope, be gladly awarded then by the heart, the larger heart, of this great and then greater nation. " Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate, Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait."

And not

only

so, but to work and wait in

UNIVERSITY

OF

C11:4IBRIDGE. - At

hope. a

congregation

held on May 27th, the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery were conferred on Robert Lawford Knaggs, Gonville and Caius.