uncertain, do not commit the ship to the untaught and inexperienced pilot. The more perilous the voyage, the higher skill and experience and the more science, are concentrated in the commander. Medicine, from its difficulty and uncertainty, demands deeper preparation.

Are not the records of the Faculty so many charts by which the junior practitioner may safely steer his course?

The entire catalogue of human suffering has been made out, and the name of the remedy is appended to the name of every disease. What else is required than reference to the name of the disease to find its remedy? In the mechanic arts the knowledge of the name of a tool does not necessarily imply the skill to use it.

Physicians have done themselves a wrong, and their noble art a wrong, by reducing to system what defies all system. They sometimes contradict themselves, and oftener one another in their nosologies.

The Nosologica Methodica of Sauvages comprises ten classes, twenty orders, three hundred and fifteen genera, and two thousand five hundred species; while Cullen has four classes, twenty orders, one hundred and fifty-one genera, and upwards of one thousand species. Good has cast his comprehensive mind on this difficult subject, and his nosology presents seven classes, twenty-one orders, one hundred and thirty genera, and four hundred and eighty species. Our distinguished countryman, Rush, has discovered disease to be a unit, and he proceeds fractionwise in his systematizing labours.

As well may poetry be written from the perusal of Aristotle's Art of Poetry, as disease be cured from the perusal of a nosology, or even the book of a systemmaker. The energizing spirit of the invisible Creator must be seen and felt from the observation of all surrounding nature, and experience acquired in the use of the language to express every change and passing sensation, to make a poet. The heart to feel a brother's sorrows, and experience acquired in the means of allaying the pangs of mortality, are essential to make a physician. The former is the gift of God. The latter is a toilsome march, commencing with a pilgrimage to the tomb of mortality, and followed by perils to comfort, character and even life, ere yet "the harp of thousand strings" has revealed in its fabric the wisdom and special design of its maker.

"Hoc opus, hic labor est"-Anatomy is the alphabet of the healing art. How difficult to learn the alphabet of our profession, notwithstanding the labors of Harvey and Haller, of Hunter and Bichat, of Morgagni, and Mascagni, and Scarpa and Magendie, and their numerous associates and worthy successors on this as well as the other side of the Atlantick. The laws of the land are cruelly against us. Might not a wise legislator turn the spirit of moral reform which hovers over the age into the channel of publick good, by securing the enactment of a law authorising the commitment of the vagrant and harlot, on yielding up life, to the extension of the light of medical knowledge? Fear might come over them and stay their steps; or if

carried along by their depraved natures in the current of abomination, their fate might open the dark recesses of truth to the healing of the sick. The first step towards a medical education being attended with such difficulty and hazard, is one of the prominent sources of the uncertainty of the healing art. The more is known of nature in course, the more readily is nature traced in her wanderings. The more is known of man in his structure, and the economy of his healthy existence, the more readily are traced the aberrations from that healthy economy in the form of disease, and the better is understood the history and termination of disease in the morbid structure it produces.

The functions of the healthy animal economy must be understood, that functional disease be understood. The structure of the healthy man must be understood, that structural disease be understood.

The uncertainty of the healing art is increased by the difficulty of access to the proper sources of knowledge. Personal experience is of slow acquisition. It is true that books on medicine are abundant; but they oftener abound in theory founded on hypothesis, than in theory founded on fact; they contain more arguments to demolish preceding or contemporary theories, than true history of human suffering.

Most of the medical authors of celebrity have received an answer to the prayer of the pious man in holy writ, would "that mine adversary had written a book." No medical book is worthy of a perusal, which is not a transcript from the book of nature.

The treasures of medical experience to be found in medical libraries need sifting, that the true may be separated from the false, the certain from the doubtful, the doubtful from the palpably untrue. The knowledge thus attained, should be arranged according to the leading divisions of anatomists and physiologists. All that is known and which has been published on the diseases of the heart, and arteries, and veins, and absorbent vessels, which constitute the system of circulation, accompanied by engravings to represent to the eye the appearance of the morbid structure, would constitute a valuable addition to the library of every practitioner in the Commonwealth.

In the engraving part, lithography steps in and volunteers her services at a very cheap rate.

The diseases of the brain and nervous system, the diseases of the organs of respiration, the diseases of the organs of digestion, the diseases of the glands and organs of secretion, the diseases of the organs of reproduction, the diseases of the bones and muscles, or organs of locomotion, and the diseases of the skin, constitute other leading divisions for the distribution of the fruits of medical experience, from the time the healing art was a separate calling, to the present moment. Were it practicable to call order out of chaos and present all the medical knowledge which has been given to the public in a neat, condensed, well arranged edition of medical classics, embellished by engravings true to nature, much time and expense might be saved to the practitioner, and the economy of human exis

tence essentially promoted. "There is nothing new under the sun, what has been, is, and shall be again."

This is the sound of true orthodoxy to all ears not heathenish. The power to reason on the future is derived from the history of the past.

A good medical history of this Commonwealth would be an important acquisition to all the Fellows of the Massachusetts Medical Society. A register of all the births and deaths is needful for a basis on which to found the calculations for insurance on life.

The influence of cultivation of the soil, in draining the sources of putrid exhalation, and in clarifying the atmosphere is seen in the disappearance of intermittents and bilious remittents. The extension of the arts of life to the promotion of human comfort has contributed also to the increased health of the inhabitants of this Commonwealth.

While a better replenished wardrobe, and a more comfortable dwelling are promoters of health, increased luxury, diminished industry, and the undue use of intoxicating liquors are impoverishing the fortunes, ruining the characters, and destroying the lives of the immoral devotees to idleness and appetite. The visions of the future will become revealed in the history of the past. "The prudent man forseeth the evil" and avoideth it. The uncertainty of the healing art almost disappears on its approach to a sound constitution; because it contains within itself the power simultaneously to endure the action of remedies, and to resist the gress of disease.

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