Cronian Lectures on the Colon, 165 



pearances are the effects of preceding causes, and a biassed con- 

 templation of such effects has not unfrequently led to erroneous 

 practice ; this was certainly long the case with respect to hydren- 

 cephalus, which was always treated as dropsy till very recently, 

 because water was found in the ventricles of the brain*. The re- 

 putation of a modern celebrated surgeon in managing dyspepsia, 

 certainly does not arise from his anatomical knowledge, great as it- 

 is, but from his acute observations on the laws which regulate the 

 economy, and on the consequences which follow a morbid coa- 

 dition of those laws ; and the brilliant success which has marked 

 the professional career of our distinguished President, exhibits the 

 advantage of that happy union of philosophy and medical know- 

 ledge which refines the understanding, and chastises the mind into 

 a judicious discrimination of the symptoms of disease. It has been 

 well remarked, that without an alliance with literature, there is often 

 something illiberal that clings to the sciences. In medichie, the 

 want of this alliance is every way disastrous — it not only shuts out 

 the fairest paths of science in the origin and progress of professional 

 knowledge ; but degrades the mind itself, which, when it wants the 

 cultivation of learning, wants that which would temper its efforts, 

 rectify its judgment, and civilize its habits. 



The idea that a minute knowledge of the anatomy of morbid parts, 

 coupled with mechanical explanation, will produce successful treat- 

 ment, has rapidly advanced manual tact into the regions of physic, 

 without improving our curative indications. This delusive impres- 

 sion has introduced further mechanical proceedings ; and now, in 

 addition to applying the hand to every pained part of the body, we 

 must employ instrumental examination, and endeavour to gain an 

 acoustic knowledge of the state of parts by mediate auscultation with 

 the stethoscope— thus gauging the depth, measuring the length 

 and breadth, taking the latitude and longitude, diving into the den- 

 sity of thickened parts, and circumscribing by chart and by scale 

 the extent and dimensions of adhesions and of fluid extravasations 

 — a proceeding derogatory to medical philosophy, and not so 

 beneficially useful in its ultimate practical application as the praises 

 bestowed upon it would lead us to believe. The student will be 

 led astray from the pursuit of objects more becoming one who is to 

 enter upon the practice of his profession with an understanding 

 formed by philosophy and literature. Instead of a judicious and 

 patient attention to the assemblage of symptoms so complicated in 

 morbid sympathies, he will neglect clinical lectures, which have un- 

 • See the Author's Statement of the Early Symptoms of Water in the Brain. 2d edit. 



