[ 630 ] [JUNE, 



MEDICINE AS A SCIENCE, AND AS A TRADE. 



THE study of medicine, combining, as it does, the most abstract 

 subjects of philosophic research, with the most difficult application of 

 practical skill, may be considered as conducing more to the happiness of 

 man than any other profession. No subject requires a closer application, 

 with a more general knowledge. The physician conversant alike in the 

 animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, whose abstruse combinations 

 demand the minutest inquiry and closest investigations, must also be well 

 acquainted with the machinery of the human frame, in all its internal and 

 external complication j even the mind, with its endless variety of affec- 

 tions, must form an important part in the attainment of professional 

 knowledge. Thus chemistry, anatomy, pathology, and electricity, each 

 of which may be considered as the study of a life, have an important 

 claim upon his attention. In the well-educated physician we find a 

 happy combination of these several sciences, attaching a responsibility to 

 character, in proportion to the degree of acquirement, and the success or 

 zeal of their application. Hence that anxiety which generally occupies 

 the mind of a physician, frequently involving his own reputation and the 

 life of the patient. Few require more firmness of mind, together with a 

 deep-rooted attachment for his profession, to bear up against the conflict- 

 ing events to which he is often exposed, and to this, without affectation, 

 may be added, his anxiety to promote the welfare and happiness of his 

 fellow man. The consciousness of having left nothing undone which 

 great professional application and extensive reading could have effected, 

 is, in his unsuccessful efforts, his great consolation, whilst, in many 

 cases, his knowledge of the fatal tendency of particular diseases, saves 

 the unfortunate patient from many painful but unavailing efforts. Thus 

 no character has stronger claims upon our respect and admiration, than 

 that of the well-educated physician, nor are there any efforts at promoting 

 human happiness to which society is more indebted, than the skilful 

 adaptation of his knowledge to the end he proposes health. The 

 cultivation of medicine as a science becomes a national object with every 

 country ; where the prolongation of life is desirable, and where the wealth 

 of a nation depends upon her population, that science, which maintains 

 the health of the operative classes, can no longer be viewed as a personal 

 benefit, but rather as a general advantage. There never was a time 

 when the scientific physician had stronger claims upon the gratitude of 

 man, than at this moment, when the world is overrun with charlatans and 

 quacks, who, ignorant both of the properties of medicines, and their 

 operation in disease, practice with impunity a profession for which they 

 have no pretensions but ignorance and impudence. 



Let us take a review of the rise and fall of the several medical 

 doctrines, in the different countries where medicine approached the nature 

 of a science. Since the days of Hippocrates, almost every nation has 

 had its systems of medical treatment, which, like the people they pro- 

 fessed to cure, have had each its period of growth, maturity, and decay, 

 whose durability was proportioned to the influence of its founder. The 

 unbounded sway which the doctrines of Hippocrates have had, and still 

 possess over the medical mind, require no comment here; deprived as he 

 was of the aid of pathology, he advanced the science as far as could be 

 reasonably expected. In Galen we have a strong proof how little the 



