PROLEGOMENON. 15 



in dead vocables, with its " shops, pestle and mortar," 

 " dried alligators' skins stuffed, and beggarly account of 

 empty boxes" ? And is this living, fresh-budding, expand- 

 ing, reproductive Nature, with her divine powers to regene- 

 rate and save the bodies of men, to be surrendered to quacks 

 and idiots, who shall place to the credit of humbuggery 

 and charlatanery the power, wisdom, and loving kindness 

 of Almighty God, who has provided for man's sustenance, 

 healing, and ecstasy this "world of goodness, light, and 

 endless love" ? Why shall not the regular profession, pos- 

 sessing the knowledge and wisdom of Nature, and holding the 

 only keys which can unlock her mysteries and scientifically 

 exhaust her resources, profit by her system of goodness 

 and mercy, her scale of rewards and punishments, reading, 

 with veneration and love, the miraculous intelligence and 

 morality that run hand-in-hand through all things, em- 

 bracing solar systems as well as stomachs and bowels, and 

 for whose rational elaboration and merciful administra- 

 tion Science stands as gentle handmaid and ministering 

 spirit ? Did not the divine Hippocrates, twenty-three hun- 

 dred years ago, from the depths of his transcendent soul 

 indite a treatise on " Airs, Waters, and Places," decided 

 by a recent astute observer to be the " most philosophical 

 of his wor^s, evincing extended observation, travel, and 

 study"? And does not this wonderful creation, at that 

 hour of the world's progress, evince in the father of medi- 

 cine an instinct of the spirit bordering on the inspiration of 

 prophecy ? "In it he inquires into the effects of the seasons, 

 winds, and various kinds of waters, localities, nature of the 

 soil, modes of life, and exercise, upon health, and the neces- 

 sity of a physician making himself acquainted with all these 

 matters. 



"He next points out the influence of climates, and the 

 diseases depending on differences in them. He compares 

 the people of Europe, and especially of Greece, with those 

 of Asia, and shows how the uniformity of the climate and 

 the fertility of the soil in the latter induce a monotonous 



