12 Medicine, [Chap. IV. 



new remedies ^v hich they have suggested, and of 

 new paths of inquiry which they have opened, is 

 too great to be reckoned. " It is no exaggera- 

 tion," Jiays a learned American physician, " to 

 assert, that the medical facts and observations 

 which have been pubhshed in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury have done more towards explaining the func- 

 tions and curing the diseases of the human body, 

 than all that remained on record for many, per- 

 haps for all, the centuries that had preceded since 

 the creation*^" 



The establishment of numerous and extensive 

 Hospitals, by which the eighteenth century is emi- 

 nently distinguished, may be considered as scarcely 

 more favourable to the interests of humanity, than 

 to the advancement of medical science. It has 

 been well observed, that the heathen zoorld never 

 produced an Hospital; and if any institutions of 

 this kind now exist among pagans, they have de- 

 rived from Christendom the benevolent plan. The 

 astonishing multiplication of such establishments, 

 in almost every part of the Christian world, and 

 especially in Great Britain, during the last cen- 

 tury, is well known to every intelligent reader; 

 and that every institution of this kind may be con- 

 sidered as a sort of medical school, from which the 

 richest stores of instruction, both, in surgery and 

 the practice of physic, are continually drawn, is too 

 o])vious to require explanation. 



To the peculiarities of the eighteenth century 

 already stated, it may be added, that every branch 



•^- Ramsay's llevic-jj of the Improvements of Medicine^ &c. 



pp i6'> j;. 



