590 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
lose no time in mastering a sufficient amount of general 
literature to enable them to study the chief medical authors 
in their own tongues, for every day that elapses increases the 
difficulty of the acquisition. Although it is true that through 
the medium of translations we are provided with most of the 
leading facts that have been discovered by the industry of 
foreign physicians and physiologists, yet there is a large 
amount of ingenious and productive thought contained in 
foreign publications which never appears in the pages of 
English literature. Professional eminence depends, to a 
great extent, on a familiarity with the labours of foreign men 
of science ; and it may be laid down as a maxim, that a man 
whose imperfect education incapacitates him from learning 
what is going on in foreign countries, is shut out from the 
hope of distinction in his own. 
Science is cosmopolitan ; she is the guest of every civilised 
people, and knows no schools or parties. An English school, 
a French School, a German school, is an anachronism. 
Wherever there is a school there is error — error professed 
and formularized. So it was with the Greeks, with the old 
schoolmen, and with the first physiologists ; with Zeno, 
Aristippus, Epicurus, and Plato; with Abelard, Duns Scotus, 
and Thomas Aquinas; with Sylvius, Brown, Stahl, Van 
Helmont, Willis, and the tribe of theorists of their day. 
Science is truth, and truth is universal. Hence it becomes 
necessary that an accomplished physician should be able to 
seek for truth wherever it can be found; and the more 
extensive his inquiries the more likely will he be to avoid 
falling into error. 
I therefore urge upon the young men who are now 
embarking in their professional career the importance of a 
good preliminary education. It will be found to be not more 
attractive than useful, and will surely gain for its possessor a 
higher position in society than without it he would be able to 
attain. 
When John Hunter was informed that he had been charged 
by Jesse Foote with being ignorant of the dead languages, he 
remarked, “ I could teach him that on the dead body, which 
he never knew in any language, dead or living.” This was a 
