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ninth, one-sixty-fifth, one-ninetieth, one hundred and seventh, and, 

 in one instance, such a sprinkling as a single penful of ink might 

 furnish, and leave enough to spare for a flourishing autograph. The 

 fairest fruits of British genius and research are shaken into the lap of 

 the American student, and the great danger seems to be, that in place 

 of the genuine culture of our own fields, the creative energy of the 

 country shall manifest itself in generating a race of curculios to revel 

 in voracious indolence upon the products of a foreign soil ! 



In viewing the great branches of Anatomy, Physiology, Surgery, 

 Obstetrics, and Practical Medicine, it will be seen at once that the 

 four first are essentially the same to the American student that they 

 are to his European models. As might be expected in a new coun- 

 try, the practical branches have almost exclusively occupied the 

 attention of the professional student. The contributions to Anatomy 

 and Physiology have been few, and for the most part insignificant 

 compared with those which have emanated from the countries of 

 Hunter, of Bichat, and of the Meckels. Of all the practical branches, 

 Operative Surgery, a most important and attractive pursuit, but still, 

 as its name (chirurgery) literally imports, a handicraft, has been the 

 favourite, and whatever credit belongs to boldness, ingenuity, and 

 dexterity, may be claimed, without fear of dispute, for its American 

 practitioners. 



But the higher problems of medicine have been, as yet, compara- 

 tively imperfectly investigated. Two fatal influences have acted not 

 merely on medical science, but on all natural science in this country. 

 The first is the habit of indolence generated by the easy acquisition 

 of a foreign literature which seems to answer every necessary pur- 

 pose. The second is the habit of negligence which springs from the 

 curious fact of a constant parallelism, which is not identity, in most 

 natural objects and phenomena of the New World, with something of 

 the older continent. In literature this has enfeebled the relation 

 between words and realities ; in science it has induced the same laxity 

 and incoherence. The American constitution must be studied by 

 itself — it differs from the European in outline, in proportions, in the 

 obvious characters of the skin and hair — why should it not differ in 

 the susceptibilities which, awakened, become disease? The Ameri- 

 can climate remoulds the European, and casts a new die of humanity 

 — will it not generate causes of disease different from those of the 

 Old World ? Over this virgin soil a new Flora is weaving her long web 

 of tapestry, flowing from the lichens of Katahdin to the myrtles of 

 Cape Sable; is there no undiscovered healing in any of its leafy and 



