Address 1; 



with physicians as with hackney coachmen who know all the streets, with- 

 out knowing anything- of what is going on within the houses." Churchill 

 the poet, insinuates that 



" Most of the evils we poor mortals know, 

 From doctors and the imagination flow." 



Byron adds, also, a stanza : 



"This is the way physicians mend— or end us, 

 Secundum artem — but although we sneer 



In health — we call them to attend us 

 Without the least propensity to jeer." 



" Medicine," says one of the most distinguished doctors of the old school, 

 " destroys more persons than it saves." Yet notwithstanding this uncer- 

 tainly — the want of knowledge of the composition and effects of the materia 

 medica, the diverse action of the same compound upon different constitu- 

 tions, the necessity of accommodating to the various climates, medicine 

 is an acknowledged science, and its progress in promoting the welfare of 

 humanity is constantly increasing in the ratio of the intelligence and learn- 

 ing of its professors, and was never so great as now. 



Jurisprudence, in its practice, cannot Ijc called a certain science. A man 

 takes law as he does medicine, or a wife, for better or worse — generally the 

 latter. It is like an eel trap — very easy to get into, but very difficult to 

 get out of. The results of a law suit are uncertain, not because the law 

 has not fixed principles, but by reason of the sometimes ignorance of its 

 professors, the perversity of those who appeal to it, and the difficulty of 

 arriving at certain fads by human testimony. Yet without its wholesome 

 influence, society would not hold together; disorder would usurp the place 

 of order, and chaos come again. 



Religion exerts its beneficent functions under similar uncertainties as to 

 results, as the kindred sciences. Negotiating between God and man, it has 

 to be subject to the influences of the hitter's disposition, and the harvest is 

 according to the character of the soil on which the seed is sown. Some 

 full by the way side, and the fowls devour them; some upon stony places, 

 and because there is not sufficient earth, they wither away; some fall 

 among thorns and are choked; whilst others fall into good ground and 

 bring forth fruit. Yet religion is a science for the reducing of man to 

 the obedience of God, and works by laws and systems, and its defects 

 and uncertainties are owing to the incompetency of the instruments em- 

 ployed, and the stubborness and inequality of the soil on which it works. 



Agriculture is no less a science because the means used are not always 

 adapted to the end in view. The only wonder is that with the little knowl- 



