346 THE PRESENT ASPECT OF MEDICINE. 



which, in fact, it is only to be considered as the formal 

 expression. The results obtained through the medium of the 

 senses are not in the slightest degree more certain or more 

 trustworthy than those reached through the medium of the 

 consciousness. They differ only in the mode in which they 

 are attained and the objects to which they are directed ; and 

 this difference again is a necessary consequence of the limited 

 constitution of the human intellect. 



I have ventured to insist on this topic, because I am 

 aware that by some it is considered as entirely foreign to 

 physiological and medical interest, and by others as involving 

 questions of doubtful propriety because admitting only of 

 metaphysical discussion. But the reciprocal influence of 

 mind and body is admitted by all, as constituting an import- 

 ant condition of health and disease ; and the investigation of 

 the laws of these reciprocal influences constitutes depart- 

 ments of inductive science, differing respectively only in the 

 character of the medium through which the facts are reached. 

 This is not the question as to whether the body is only a 

 form of the mind, or the mind a product of the body. It is 

 not the question as to whether the mind is deposited in the 

 body at some one or other period of its development ; or 

 whether the mind is first produced, and then accumulates 

 and arranges within its own form the different parts of its 

 own habitation, and regulates and controls them during life. 

 These are questions important in the history of philosophy, 

 and involving metaphysical discussion properly so called. 

 But they are questions that have no immediate bearing on 

 our topic, which involves an extended series of facts inti- 

 mately connected with the wellbeing of humanity. 



Every decided advance in science or philosophy is coin- 

 cident with the ingress of clearer conceptions of the object 

 to be attained, and the mode of attaining it. In physiology, 

 therefore, we see at present that although the steady and 



