REMARKS 



ON SOME PASSAGES IN THE REVIEW 



OF 



Principles of General and Comparative Physiology ,'' 



IN THE 



EDINBURGH MEDICAL & SURGICAL JOURNAL, 

 January, 1840. 



By WILLIAM B. CARPENTER, M.D., M.R.C.S., &c. 



IT is with much pain that I feel compelled to request the attention 

 of the readers of this journal to the following remarks. My object 

 in putting them forth to the world is solely to defend myself from 

 injurious imputations. I have no underhand purpose to serve. I 

 write more in sorrow than in anger. But the mode in which I 

 have been attacked leaves me, in the opinion of my friends as 

 -svell as in my own, no choice but to reply. 



When I sent forth my volume into the world, it was with the 

 confident expectation that, w^hatever reception it might experience, 

 it would be judged of by its merits alone. Few persons were less 

 disposed to over-estimate these than myself. I was well aware of 

 its many imperfections. I prepared myself, therefore, to expect 

 unfavourable criticism ; and I determined to allow no feeling of 

 pride, or of vexation at the mode in which the correction might be 

 administered, to interfere with my profiting by it. Until the pub- 

 lication of the last number of the Edinlurgh Medical and Surgical 

 Journal^ however, I have had little occasion for such an exercise 

 of self-control. The general opinions expressed of my work, both 

 by the public press, and by individuals well qualified to estimate 

 it, have been far more favourable than I had dared to anticipate ; 

 and I have had the unexpected gratification of receiving the highest 

 approbation from quarters in which no personal regard could have 

 exerted any influence. 



Had the review, on which I now feel called on to remark, been 

 executed with good faith^ I should have remained silent, however 

 depreciating its tone might have been. But I have been held up 

 to public reprobation for entertaining opinions against which I have 

 most positively expressed myself; and I have been condemned, on 

 this false ground, as altogether unfit for the duties of a Public 

 Instructor — a post of which it is my highest ambition to be deemed 

 worthy. Such statements, from an authority so respectable as the 

 Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal^ must, if I allow them 

 to remain unrefuted, exert a prejudicial influence over the whole of 

 my subsequent career; and the reply which I therefore feel it 

 necessary to make, is not dictated by animosity towards the con- 



