IN MEDICAL SCIENCE. 71 



food of disease, as wholesome aliment is the support 

 of health. Cowper's lines, in The Task, show the 

 matter-of-course practice of his time : — 



" He does not scorn it, who has long endured 

 A fever's agonies, and/ec? on drugsV 



Dr. Kimball, of Lowell, who has been In the habit of 

 seeing a great deal more of typhoid fever than most 

 practitioners, and whose surgical exploits show him 

 not to be wanting in boldness or enterprise, can tell 

 you whether he finds it necessary to feed his patients 

 on drugs or not. His experience is, I believe, that 

 of the most enlightened and advanced portion of the 

 profession ; yet I think that even in typhoid fever, 

 and certainly in many other complaints, the efiects of 

 ancient habits and prejudices may still be seen in the 

 practice of some educated physicians. 



To you, young men, it belongs to judge all that 

 has gone before you. You come nearer to the great 

 fathers of modern medicine than some of you imagine. 

 Three of my own instructors attended Dr. Rush's 

 Lectures. The illustrious Haller mentions Rush's in- 

 augural thesis * in his Bibliotheca Anatomica ; and 

 this same Haller, brought so close to us, tells us he 

 remembers Ruysch, then an old man, and used to 

 carry letters between him and Boerhaave.f Look 

 through the history of medicine from Boerhaave to 



* De Coctione .Ciborum in Veniriculo. Edinb. 1768. — Bibl. Anat. 11. 657. 

 t " Ssepissime bonnm senem vidi, ssepe Boerhaavium inter et ipsum 

 iiterarura vector." Ibid., I. 629. 



