ADVERTISEMENT. 
As some incongruity is obvious between the title and the 
commencement of the present publication, it is advisable to 
state how it has originated. The Author, on entering on 
the course of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in King's 
College, having been requested by his colleagues, as well as 
some distinguished members of the Profession, to print his 
Introductory Address, and by others to give proofs of his 
opinions more in detail ; determined, in complying with the 
former, to attend as much as possible to the latter request. 
From the pressure of other occupations, it was not until the 
greater part of the Lecture was in print that the additions 
(with a few exceptions, those from p. 40 to 192) were made, 
and at a time, when a publication to the extent it has now 
reached was never contemplated. The object, in some of these 
additions, having been to show the probability of the antiquity 
of Hindoo Medicine in connection with Indian commerce, 
independent of the proofs afterwards adduced, some repeti- 
tion will perhaps appear to have been unnecessarily introduced ; 
this was in some measure inseparable from the cumulative 
nature of the argument adopted, in proceeding from com- 
paratively modern to more ancient times ; but partly caused 
by the interruptions, amidst which this essay has been written. 
These circumstances are mentioned in hopes of obtaining the 
reader's consideration, as well as to account for the imperfec- 
tions of the work, in connection with its title. This has been 
adopted in conformity to the suggestion of valued friends, 
that the object of the publication should occupy a more pro- 
minent position than its occasion. 
62, Berners Street, 
1st January 1838. 
