ie 
Inaugural Address. 45 
their causes, their symptoms, and their effects; pathological 
anatomy has sect #7 many of the changes which various 
structures undergo, some of which morbid conditions impair 
the energies, and others are incompatible with the duration 
of life. But what avails it that the physician can trace by 
symptoms the successive stages of disorganization, as they 
proceed in structures concealed from view? what avails it 
that the surgeon can proclaim the appearance of such mor- 
bid alterations long before dissection unfolds them to the 
light? what avails it that both can foretell the impairment or 
destruction of vital parts, without they can at the same time 
learn to check the ravages of disease, and either to alleviate 
the sufferings of the patient or to afford him a perfect cure? 
Without such an application of this art, the means of obtain- 
ing it would to many be repulsive, and the science itself not 
a blessing, but a bane; as the foreknowledge of ills that 
could not be relieved would but aggravate the misery man is 
called on to endure. But such is not the opprobrium of our 
useful, and hence noble arts; for the theory of physic is 
founded on experience, and the benefits of its practice who 
can venture to deny! As sciences, medicine and surgery find 
few their equals; and as arts they are excelled by none. 
Much, | repeat, has been lately done to advance our 
knowledge of disease, and something, though much less, to 
perfect our instruments of cure. ‘These, however, are sister 
sciences, or rather their connexion is of a still closer kind: 
they are twins, which, as they are naturally, so for ever they 
should remain inseparably conjoined; and for the Medico- 
Botanical Society, whose attention is especially directed to 
this point, has the grateful task been left of perfecting this 
union: on it devolves the duty of steadying the arm of 
science, and placing surer weapons in her hands; i. e. of 
providing for physic new and more certain remedial means. 
A circumstance which still shrouds medicine in mystery, 
must have been formerly much more perplexing than we find it 
now, Even, however, in the present day, it frequently involves 
the principles of our practice in obscurity; and hence some 
persons, ignorant of how many cases there are in which it ap- 
proaches demonstration, have not scrupled to call: physic a 
conjectural science; to define its object to be the calculation 
of chances, and its decision the balance of probabilities. I, 
of course, allude to the acknowledged difficulty of determin- 
ing how far a cure should be attributed to the renovating 
powers of life, and how far to the remedial agents which art 
employs: for some diseases, and especially in some constitu- 
tions, will disappear not only without, but even in spite of the 
