140. TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 
receptacle, to be packed with facts and fictions, 
useful and otherwise; or the horticultural plan, 
which looks on it as a living plant, to be nursed to 
a healthy and more mature condition, ere the time 
for transplanting arrives, when it is to become 
useful or ornamental by the exercise of the healthy 
powers which have been educed. It is palpable 
that in all professional education there is a large 
mass of fact to be learned, but obvious also that 
the facts will be of little use without the art of 
handling them and turning them to account. More 
especially is this the case in medicine. The facts 
which are brought under the notice of medical 
students are, as you have experienced, these: the 
modes of preservation of health and treatment of 
disease; the laws of health and disease and the 
actions of remedies, which form the immediate 
basis of treatment; the structure of the body, 
without a knowledge of which its operations, 
healthy and otherwise, cannot be known, and 
without which you dare not use the knife; the 
chemical laws which govern both the body in its 
operations and the remedies which you propose 
to use; and lastly, the characters of animals and 
vegetables, that domain of life to which our life 
belongs. I have placed foremost that which is 
most prominent in the minds of most of you—the 
