Answer for the junior members of the Royal College of Surgeons, of Edinburgh, to the Memorial of Dr James Gregory / [John Bell].

  • Gregory James, 1753-1821.
Date:
1800
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Answer for the junior members of the Royal College of Surgeons, of Edinburgh, to the Memorial of Dr James Gregory / [John Bell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    impenetrable to reproof. There have been men in this U- niverfity, before whom we could have bowed down with reverence. We fhall quote the words of an Old Pro- \ fessor, who felt that there was fomething important in his office, fomething ferious in life; who felt for the dignity of his profeffion, the calamities of human nature, and the fufferings of the poor : We fhall quote the gracious, dignified, manly fentiments of the Memoria- \ lift’s father, a man fo efteemed, that in thefe times we hardly know to whom we fhould transfer the regard his I character and writings infpire. We call on one who will j fpeak to him, “ poffim crematos excitare mortuos.” “ There are fome peculiar circumftances in the profef- fion of a phyfician, which Ihould naturally difpofe him to look beyond the prefent fcene of things, and engage his heart on the fide of religion. He has many opportu- nities of feeing people, once the gay and the happy, funk in deep retired diftrefs ; fometimes devoted to a certain 1 but painful and lingering death ; fometimes ftruggling with bodily anguifh, or the ftill fiercer tortures of a dif- ] traded mind. Such afflidive fcenes, one fhould fup- pofe, might foften any heart, not dead to every feeling of humanity, and make it reverence that religion which alone can fupport the foul in the moft complicated di- ftreftes; that religion which teaches to enjoy life with chearfulnefs, and to refign it with dignity.” Serious duties will beget ferious thoughts, but they muft be long familiar in the mind before they can be thus happily exprefled. One plain word of this good old man marks a feeling mind more than all the effufionsof