Superiority in Medicine.

The enthusiasm in surgical lines, within the past few years, while resulting in the developing of great surgeons, is largely to blame for the improper development of therapeutics. Students enter college with the belief that the great thing to be desired is to be a great surgeon. The truth is the great thing to be desired is to be a great physician, and every medical institution should endeavor to make the chairs of Practice, Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacy, so attractive that the student shall aspire to be thorough and complete in the study of these branches. That, with the knowledge of surgery which every college course now demands, should make every student a successful practitioner of medicine.

Fothergill says therapeutics is the structure itself, in our professional requirements, while all the other branches are the foundation stones. The young physician's aspiration toward success in medicine, will make him thorough in the details of diagnosis, will perfect him in the knowledge of the action of individual drugs, and their specific influence upon exact conditions of disease, and will enable him to rise above the common herd in intelligent prescribing. This certainly is to be most desired of all in professional requirements at the present time. And so few are really excellent in that, that it is not difficult to attain superiority.

Ellingwood's Therapeutist, Vol. 2, 1908, was edited by Finley Ellingwood M.D.