ON M Vo IT IS. 
497 
these are too indelibly fixed to be forgotten, and I have found that 
all those who pursue their art with ardour and interest confess the 
same. Gladly would I learn that things since my day are mended ; 
but, alas ! I fear that it is only a wish of my heart, not a reality. 
The munificent Creator has placed in our hands means whereby 
the pains and penalties to which “ flesh is heir” may be assuaged ; 
not to use them is culpable, and to use them improperly is still more 
so. In every country may be found indigenous remedies for indi- 
genous diseases ; and have we not the wide world besides to cull 
from ! But unless the causes, symptoms, and progress of disease 
are known, how can we employ the power at our command! It is 
like putting a beautiful piece of mechanism into the hands of a 
Hottentot and expecting the same to be regulated or repaired. 
Before a child can read, it must be taught the alphabet — so must a 
professional student be taught the elements of the profession he is 
to follow. The principles upon which investigation is to be con- 
ducted, the method whereby observations may be reasoned on and 
tested as to their accuracy, and many other points, which, though 
they may appear to some trivial, are the very keystone to the 
arch, and the want of which will be felt for the remainder of a life. 
To attempt to administer to the ailments of a living being, whe- 
ther man or animal, without the requisite knowledge to be enabled 
to judge in the main with correctness, is cruelty, barbarity, and. 
death, in such hands nearly allied to murder, and in a correct sense 
worthy of as severe a punishment, because it is, it must be, done 
with a consciousness of the incapacity. 
I feel strongly tempted to quote instances in which all that I 
have stated is borne out, or, indeed, more than borne out ; and so 
numerous are they, that you may find them at every step : but I 
will not willingly hurt the feelings of those who, being under a de- 
lusion, will, nay must, inevitably awake to a sense of their position. 
I may cast a smile at the deluded, but it is one of pity, not derision. 
But a few days since, I, by mere accident, was perusing a peri- 
odical with high-sounding names appended, in which the subject 
nearest my heart, the advancement of my art, was so completely 
falsified, such puerile conceits dignified with the name of science, 
such personal self-laudation, that I felt humbled, ashamed of the 
art to which I belonged. A satire more bitter, a condemnation 
more severe, could not exist, could not have been advanced by the 
direst enemies that science can have ; but 
“ Heaven me such usage send, 
Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend.” 
The object I have hitherto had in view in remarks on the dis- 
ease of muscular fibre, which I have termed myoitis, has been to 
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