At the opening of the term and the beginnings of debate over educational reform at the Medical School, Holmes gave this address to the students, partly in defense of the summer term of practical instruction over the formal lectures of the winter. “The bedside is always the true center of medical teaching. Certain branches must be taught in the lecture-room, and will necessarily involve a good deal that is not directly useful to the future practitioner. But the over ambitious and active student must not be led away by the seduction of knowledge for its own sake from his principal pursuit. The humble beginner, who is alarmed at the vast fields of knowledge opened to him, may be encouraged by the assurance that with a very slender provision of science, in distinction from practical skill, he may be a useful and acceptable member of the profession to which the health of the community is entrusted.” Cover of the address given by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) to the Harvard Medical School in 1867, entitled Teaching from the chair and at the bedside : an introductory lecture delivered before the Medical Class of Harvard University, November 6, 1867
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