452 NUTRITION. 



high a value to the results yielded by this branch of science. We 

 have often observed that pure chemistry, and more especially 

 physiological chemistry, is still too incomplete to admit of the 

 successful prosecution of such investigations, and hence the cause 

 why so few chemists of celebrity have devoted themselves to 

 pathological chemistry. 



The cultivation of this department of science has therefore for 

 the most part been left to beginners or mere chemical dilettanti, 

 who too often were ignorant of even the first principles of 

 physiology. It is to the anxiety of physicians to obtain chemical 

 elucidations, to the imperfect training in the true method of 

 physical inquiry manifested by these investigators, to their 

 ignorance of scientific processes, and to their misconception of the 

 true objects of pathological chemistry, that we owe those confused 

 works which, instead of enriching pathological chemistry, have 

 done nothing more than encumber and complicate it. In the 

 hasty anxiety to turn all things to account, these carelessly and 

 hurriedly collected materials have been indiscriminately applied to 

 every possible diagnostic, prognostic, and other practical purpose. 

 Such a method of proceeding, when carried to its extreme length, 

 degenerates into mere purposeless uroscopyand other similar follies, 

 which are not a whit better than the practices of the old water 

 doctors. The labours of such medical handicraftsmen have at 

 most only served to foster the flights of fancy of ready-writing 

 journalists and ingenious physicians, who were not endowed with 

 the mind requisite for earnest natural inquiry, and who, from the 

 barren symbolization of sensuous perceptions and of confused 

 hallucinations, have interwoven a complicated net-work of facts, 

 which has been dignified with the title of humoral pathology. 



Let us not, however, be discouraged by these drawbacks, which 

 are inseparable from all newly developed sciences ; but let us 

 rather trustfully and hopefully look forward to a brighter future. 



"THOUGH IT BE WINTER NOW, THE SPEING MUST COME AGAIN."-" 



* " Es muss dock Fruhliny werden." 



