ture of his friend in language, that shall convey a distinct and accurate idea of his looks to a stranger. After he has exhausted his powers of description and eloquence in this attempt, let him place the original before the stranger's eyes, and see how miserably be has failed. Though a faint and coarse outline of the appearance of his acquaintance may have been obtained, it will be discovered that no very distinct notion of the real man has been communicated after all. There is a peculiarity of expression, a delicacy and proportion of the features, a turn of the chin and the nose, a fire in the eye, and a sternness combined with benignity in the whole, which defies the power of language.

It is in consequence of this inadequacy of language to convey ideas of the sort to which reference has been made, that books and precepts alone are insufficient to make a physician. Experience must be added; but let our meaning be understood. There is a blind, ignorant, careless, routine sort of experience, acquired by minds that are bustling enough, but of narrow dimensions, which does not give a man knowledge, but only confidence and selfconceit. This is the experience of those who boast of their number of patients, of their twenty or forty years' practice; who assume authoritative airs, and are dogmatical in all their intercourse; who think themselves warranted by virtue of their years to put off the little modesty they once possessed. Nobody thinks a man qualified to administer the affairs of government, without a knowledge of its principles, and without a mind of a tolerably capacious caliber, even though he may have traveled many times over his native state, and spent a long life in accumulating observations on men and manners, gathered up indiscriminately from barrooms and porter houses, from political quacks and electioneering busy-bodies; and how can it be supposed that the mere pretender to physic, who has seen much, but properly observed nothing,-who has been thirty years in a sick room, and still knows nothing of disease, who has never been taught the elements of his profession, and is incapable perhaps of learning, can act with intelligence the difficult and complex part of a physician? Experience then must be combined with a knowledge of principles, in the medical man. But there is a certain kind of tact, a sort of facility, or quickness, and even accuracy, in the investigation of medical phenomena, which can only be acquired by practice. There is a kind of living reality in these phenomena, when present to the senses, which cannot be conveyed in words, and of which, one who has never made them objects of sense, can have no idea. Some of the writers on yellow fever mention as one of its characteristics, a certain indescribable appearance of the countenance, which strikes the observer at first sight, which they have

no words to depict, but which, when once seen, can never b forgotten or mistaken. A physician then, must have his eye open and in constant use; but it should not be forgotten that the mind is to be exercised as well as the senses. The physical fac ulties every one possesses, and all may use them-the nurse as well as the medical man-but the requisite mental furniture, native and acquired, is the property of a much smaller number. Without this intellectual portion of the man, the senses are useless; they inform only to deceive and betray.

Besides the complexity of medical phenomena, and the equivocal nature of the signs which designate them, which have introduced confusion and uncertainty into medicine, and retarded its advancement towards a more perfect state, there are other causes growing out of the human mind itself, which have interrupted its progress. Man, though he sometimes seems to prefer a round-about way to a direct, plain, and open one, is inreality given to indolence and hates exertion. In order to economize in mental effort, and to avoid laborious examination, instead of subjecting every thing to a rigid scrutiny, and drawing inferences with the caution which philosophy teaches, he gathers a few isolated facts, without fatiguing himself with the sifting and weighing of them, and sets himself about framing hypotheses which he applies in explanation of all nature. If he has a favorite science, he carries it with him, and applies it to the solution of every thing anomalous or obscure with which he meets. He seems to suppose that there is no science in the world but his own, and no laws but those he has been accustomed to investigate. Medicine, from its intricacy, has been peculiarly obnoxious to this false philosophy. With these dreaming philosophers, a single fact has served for weeks of busy speculation. By them the animal system is considered to be a piece of mechanism governed by mechanical laws, and acted upon by material agents in the way of inanimate matter. Thus we hear a great deal of nonsense about animal chemistry and electricity, vital mechanics, &c. Disease is considered as a real entity, as distinct and uniform in its characters, as animals and plants, and as susceptible of rigid classification as quadrupeds and trees. Medicines are looked upon in the light of specifics, and are supposed to cure diseases by entering into the blood, searching out its lurking-places, entering into combination with it, and neutralizing it in the same way that chlorine does the fetid gases. Now these are easy ways of thinking, but very absurd ones. In order to gain any knowledge of the human system, either in a healthy or morbid state, it must be studied; and it must be studied too by itself, and investigated by laws of its own.

Every one knows the fanatic rage for hypotheses which has been exhibited by the most distinguished medical writers. This is a serious evil; it has its origin in the nature of medical subjects, and in the propensities of the human mind alluded to above. But in proscribing hypothesis, we should be careful about extending the proscription to theory. A legitimate theory is only a generalization of facts. It is a conclusion put into the form of a proposition, and arrived at by a purely inductive method. Every philosopher who observes and classifies facts, and deduces from them principles which he can apply in the way of synthesis to the explanation of other facts, may be said to theorize; and when he makes use of these principles in his processes of reasoning, he makes use of theories. A theory affords a solution for every phenomenon which can occur within its own proper range. A hypothesis is a very different thing; it is resorted to in the absence of facts, and is intended to account for effects of an unknown cause. It becomes dangerous because it usurps the place of theory. When Newton generalized the facts in relation to gravitation, and expressed them in a single proposition, all bodies have a tendency to approach each other he was the author of a theory of gravitation. When he made the supposition, that an invisible ether was projected from the regions of space upon all bodies, forcing them mechanically towards each other, thus resolving the phenomena of gravitation into those of impulse, he was the inventor of a hypothesis. When Harvey by inductive research ascertained the course of the blood in the blood vessels, and announced his discovery in a few general propositions, he gave to the world the theory of its circulation; but when his successors, the mechanical philosophers, attempted to account for the movement of the blood on purely mechanical principles, asserting the heart to be a mighty hydraulic engine, of 180,000 pounds power, they dreamed and framed hypotheses. Theories are the product of great philosophic minds-minds of acute and patient observation, of deep reflection and sound judgment. Hypotheses are the fruit of a lively fancy, a restless imagination, of a mind of more mobility than solidity, of more splendor than strength or depth. A theory is no more nor less than a general truth or principle. A hypothesis is a conjecture. Without the former, science can have no existence, and art degenerates into sheer empiricism. Without it, a physician is a mere quack. Even the latter (hypothesis) may have its uses within certain limits, and when put forth in its true character. It may serve as a sort of bond of connection to scattered and isolated facts-it may assist the memory and stimulate to inquiry, and even give hints leading to important discoveries. In this way it may be useful, VOL. IV.

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and even render great service, in the absence of full and positiv knowledge. If it embodies many facts, as it may do in consis tency with its nature, it may be convenient in a thousand instan ces, where nothing better can be substituted in its place. It is it abuse which should be deprecated.

Theory and practice together, or science and the art of apply ing it to the cure of diseases, make the perfect physician. Med. icine admits the division into the medical sciences, and the medi cal art. The medical sciences are anatomy, physiology, etiology, pathology, nosology, materia medica, chimistry, botany, mental philosophy, and philosophy in general. Some of these, of course, are only auxiliary. All these may be learnt in the lecture-room. The medical art, sometimes called therapeutics, consists in the application of these sciences to the single purpose of curing diseases. This can be acquired only in the sick chamber. From the first we derive our principles, from the second our tact. By the study of the first we learn philosophy, the other consists in using it. We learn both, we practice only the latter. In the acquisition of the one we exercise the intellectual, in that of the other, the perceptive faculties. They are both essentially united in the qualified physician, and of course are equally important. The medical man then, who understands and follows his profession, exercises a scientific art. This union of science and art is not peculiar to the calling of the physician; it exists in that of the warrior, the ruler, etc. There is the science of war, and the art of war; the science of government, and the art of government. The knowledge of the practitioner of physic then, as well as that of the warrior, the ruler, etc., is made up of science and art, of theory and experience, of principles and practice, of philosophy and tact in applying it.

The theoretical part of medicine has grown into disrepute of late. This is a matter of regret, as it lowers the dignity of the profession, and places it too much on a par with the purely mechanical arts, in which success depends upon manual dexterity and slight of hand. The result has been that the perceptive faculties have been called into exercise at the expense of the intellectual or reflective. Expert practitioners have been more common than able physicians or sound philosophers. The fashionable ambition for mere dexterity, has contributed to narrow the understanding, and to debilitate all its powers, and has led directly to empiricism. This rage for practical knowledge is one of the errors of the day, and exists in almost every department of knowledge. It has resulted indeed in the accumulation of a vast number of facts; but these, in consequence of the want of sufficient mind to arrange, to classify them, to mold them into ra

tional theories, and to deduce from them principles, have often remained a frightful and unwieldy mass of confused and disjointed materials, without any features of resemblance or bond of union, and unsusceptible of being converted to any useful purpose. Some individual and mostly minute branches of knowledge have been the gainers by this mania for isolated facts, but philosophy has received a proportional detriment. Men of small minds skillee in minutice and wonderful in details, have crowded out of the field those of a more noble and capacious mold, who deal less with particular facts, and things of a microscopic size, than with general principles and important truths. It has too often been considered the end and aim of science, to collect facts, without any reference to its higher object-the discovery of principles. Philosophers have taken rank according to the number of particulars which they have observed, and could command. This groveling among details, without attempting loftier flights in philosophy, has a tendency at length to bind the mind to earth, and to destroy the taste and ability to rise to things of a higher and nobler nature. Those who have attempted it, have shown by their awkward movements and erratic course, that they were out of their proper element. Minute anatomy, morbid and healthy, has been cultivated with extraordinary success. Whatever the knife or the microscope can throw light upon, has been investigated with wonderful patience and ingenuity, and whatever human dexterity and assiduity could effect, has been accomplished. But medical philosophy has been neglected. Whatever belongs to reason to do, has often been either unattempted, or miserably enough performed. Whenever an attempt has been made to exercise mind, it has too frequently shot into the wildest excesses, in consequence of a want of discipline, and ignorance of the rules of philosophizing. In the place of a beautiful and well proportioned edifice, it has raised a huge and offensive pile, as hideous in its appearance, as rotten in its materials.

In order to obviate the evils incident to the present state of things, the rising generation should be taught more and better philosophy. The mind should be expanded by general science, and taught its true objects. It should be rendered comprehensive, by the contemplation of general truths. It should be taught to observe, to reflect, to reason; to draw rational conclusions, and to establish just principles. It should be taught to know that facts are of little value, unless they lead to some important truth. In teaching this, Bacon's principles should be continually and effectually inculcated. Were this done, science would be wrested from the hands of quacks, and would rise to that dignified place which belongs to it. Medicine too would be redeemed from em