Agriculture and its Bearins:s on Medicine. 275 
extent uncertain, would be as foolish as to refuse to avail our- 
selves of the morning light, because it is not equal to that of the 
mid day sun." 
After the slumber of ages, agriculture is rousing its dormant en- 
ergies. Ardent enquirers are every where springing up, eager to 
receive and impart instruction. If this spirit of investigation 
goes on increasing, the medical world are like to have the tables 
fairly turned upon them. There is danger that in future dis- 
coveries, the scientific agriculturist will more than divide the honors 
with his medical friends, that they will become the future pioneers 
in those very sciences in which the former have gained so many 
laurels. 
The profound ignorance which very generally prevails with 
reference to the principles upon which medicine is founded, may 
be regarded as one of the chief causes why this science has made 
no more progress and why much remains to be accomplished. 
It is a law in hydrostatics, that water can rise no higher in the 
fountain than the source from whence it flows, so the standing 
of medical men will be determined somewhat by the character of 
the community in which they live. If it be distinguished for its 
general intelligence, its mental elevation and its moral worth, ac- 
knowledged incapacity will not long be tolerated. If no great 
demand be made upon the physician for adequate knowledge, for 
intellectual culture or mental superiority, there is great danger 
that he will relax his energies and sink to mediocrity. 
May we not then confidentially predict that the agricultural 
community, numerically, pecuniarily and influentially exceeding 
any other class, when their attention shall be fully awakened to 
the importance of becoming versed in those scientific principles 
which form the basis of their art, when their increasing intelli- 
gence shall enable them to point out the bearings of those princi- 
ples upon other sciences, and that such are their intimate relations 
and connections and dependencies, that progress in the one is 
equivalent to advancement in the other, they will then become 
the competent tribunals, qualified to distinguish between the 
claims of mere quackery and real talent, cultivated and enriched 
by the accumulation of science and knowledge. The merits and 
claims of medicine will then be more duly appreciated and ac- 
knowledged. Natural science, to which both medicine and 
agriculture are singularly indebted and the source from which 
both must derive, in the future, valuable acquisitions, will prove 
a bond of union which shall more intimately cement them 
together. 
No longer degraded and borne down in the unequal contest 
with ignorance, with prejudice and with error, some impediments 
will have been removed, which have long assisted in preventing 
medicine from rising to its true dignity as a profession. — Trans. 
Med. Society. 
