432 Observations on Organic Chemistry 



coveries of science, enabled to recognise it under any form, and to refer 

 them all to a common basis. 



It must be the same in disease, the morbific agent, — the medicinal 

 substance, may produce in two individuals effects very unlike in their 

 manifestation, and yet the effects themselves must be the same ; the 

 symptom invariably indicative of this effect being observed in two, three, 

 or four individuals, must be repeated in hundreds and thousands of in- 

 stances. The symptoms in the aggregate, are, perhaps, never united 

 in any individual, but if those present be correctly observed and rightly 

 apprehended, it is impossible to mistake the causes of the disease, or to 

 be in doubt as to the remedies required for its cure. 



By simply making use of the acquisitions of chemists, of the profound 

 knowledge now obtained respecting chemical forces, by applying the 

 infinitely more precise knowledge we now possess of organic substances, 

 and by introducing new methods, physiology and pathology will arrive 

 at fixed and immutable principles. The acquisitions of anatomy can 

 only in this way be rendered capable of useful applications, and no 

 power on earth can stay the progress of science in this direction, which 

 every one must acknowledge is the fruit of progress, — the offspring of 

 the present age. 



Ignorance will withdraw from science from the very moment in which 

 it is compelled to verify conclusions by a well-regulated and consis- 

 tent method of investigation, taking into account every condition of 

 natural phenomena — every influence and contingency affecting the 

 symptoms of disease. Even at the present moment physicians, by false 

 interpretations of badly observed phenomena, lead each other astray 

 and carry on interminable discussions and contentions about the most 

 immaterial things. It was precisely the same with chemistry during 

 its transition state, when the phlogistic theory was disproved. Every- 

 thing was for the time unsettled, and every suggestion and hypothesis 

 admitted ; the old basis upon which the science rested was cast down, 

 and the new one had not yet been established. All this is now altered ; 

 the true groundwork of the science is firmly established ; the so-called 

 practical chemist no longer looks down upon what is called theory with 

 a smile of compassion or contempt, as is still frequently the case in 

 medicine. No chemist relies any longer upon his own individual ex- 

 perience, in which he may be rivalled or surpassed by a clever peasant 

 or shepherd. Formerly the chemist went to the soap-boiler, to the 

 tanner, to the manufacturer, and artisan, whereas, at present, the soap- 

 boiler, the tanner, the manufacturer, and artisan frequent our univer- 

 sities, because they know that it is science alone which can furnish them 



