Note 336 — THE CONCLUSION: COMPREHENDING A RETROSPECT OF THE LIFE OF DAVID RITTENHOUSE,

Three years before Dr. Rush expressed these opinions, so generally unfavourable to classical learning and an academic education, he seems to have thought these necessary qualifications for a physician at least. In his Lecture on the Character of Dr. Sydenham, delivered in Dec. 1793, is this passage: “From the short records of his life, which have been published by the different editors of his works, it appears that his education in academical learning and medicine, was perfectly regular. He became a scholar at Oxford, and a doctor of medicine at the university of Cambridge. I mention these facts,” adds our learned Professor, “in order to refute an opinion which has been introduced by some lazy and illiterate practitioners of physic, that he was indebted wholly to intuition for all his knowledge of medicine. Men may become wise and distinguished by meditation or observation, in the science of morals and religion; but education and study are absolutely necessary to constitute a great physician.”

With all due deference to the abilities and judgment of the Professor, the Memorialist presumes, that if “education and study are absolutely necessary to constitute a great physician,” they are equally requisite in the formation of a great astronomer: because a knowledge of geometry and optics can no more be attained by intuition, than that of anatomy and the materia medica; yet these sciences are, respectively, indispensable in the formation of the two characters, to which they severally relate.

Still, adds Dr. Rush, “It is true Dr. Sydenham did not adopt, or follow, the errors of the schools in which he had been educated; but, by knowing them thoroughly, he was able, more easily, to examine and refute them.” Here, then, is an admission, that even an intimate knowledge of such errors is eminently useful, by enabling a man of a sound and cultivated mind to refute them: for, the refutation of existing errors, affords a most important aid to the advancement of true science.

Sydenham, it appears, received his collegiate education at both the English universities. It may not therefore be improper, on this occasion, to introduce a quotation from an invaluable elementary work;^[336a] in order to shew, what was the opinion entertained by a learned and distinguished German, of the English Universities—on the models of which, the higher seminaries of learning in the United States are formed. “Of all the Universities of Europe,” says Baron Bielfeld, “those of Oxford and Cambridge in England appear at present to approach the nearest to perfection: The great men they produce, are a better proof than any other argument.^[336b] We could wish,” adds this highly enlightened foreigner, “always to see an university a real city of learning, a place consecrated entirely to the muses and their disciples; that the Greek and Latin languages were there predominant; and that every thing were banished from thence, which could cause the least dissipation in those who devote themselves to letters.” “The man who confines himself to his closet,”—says our author, in another place,—“is but rarely visited by the sciences, the arts and the belles lettres: to acquire their intimate acquaintance, he must seek them in those places where Minerva, Pallas, Apollo, and the Muses, have fixed their residence. Emulation, that strong impulse in the career of all our pursuits, should constantly attend the man of letters from his early youth to the last period of his life; in the school, at college, at the university, in those employments to which his knowledge may lead him, or in those academies of science to which he may be admitted. Emulation is an animating faculty, that results from society: and few there are, to whom nature has given a genius sufficiently strong to attain an extensive erudition in solitude; who are provided with wings that can bear them, without guides, without models, without companions or supports, to the lofty regions of the empyrean.”