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CO M PTE- 11 EN 1) U OF THE 
of’ which science is composed. It chains them together, or it 
separates them. It deduces their importance, absolute and rela- 
tive ; and assigns them a philosophic order, which removes all 
fatigue from the memory, and the intelligence from all embarras- 
ment. 
Let the recompence which is now about to be decreed to 
merit, in this your solemn festival, inspire you more decidedly 
with the love of science and the love of improvement, which de- 
velop the intellect and aggrandize the mind. Let there be for 
all a powerful encouragement, and for those that are about to 
receive them a happy presage of services often eminent, and 
always useful, which science and society have a right to expect 
from them. 
As for you, gentlemen, who have completed the term of your 
studies, and before whom, consequently, a new and difficult career 
is about to open, I would say, beware that the honours which 
you have won to-day do not lead you to imagine that you can 
dispense with study. On the contrary, know that, in quitting 
this school, you carry with you, so to say, only a fund of pre- 
cepts, the application of which demands, without ceasing on 
your part, new studies. Have it always present in your mind, 
that medicine, of the study of which you have as yet only in some 
sort commenced the prelude, is a science entirely of deduction, 
and that observation is the only school in which she can be 
really understood and carried to perfection. That it is, in con- 
sequence of observation, the mother of all the natural sciences; or, 
in other words, attention is incessantly fixed on a tablet so mo- 
bile as that of nature and so various in all its manifestation. Here 
it is full of health, and acting with vigour; in another place it 
is diseased, or succumbing under the influence of a morbific 
agent ; then, acting in the full plenitude of its power, the art of 
healing again assumes all its certainty, and makes its assured 
progress. Carefully observe the organic affections so numerous 
under the different relations of their nature, their duration, their 
termination, their mode of action, the means used to combat 
them, for these constitute the commencement, the centre, and 
the termination of medicine. 
Such are the grand and important truths towards which your 
studies should be constantly directed, if you would obtain in 
the practice of the medical art the success that will assure you 
the public confidence, and contribute to the advancement of 
science, and do honour to your instructors, and attest the in- 
creasing worth of those invaluable institutions in which you 
have been educated, and to which you are so deeply indebted. 
They also, who are eager to understand the truth, often closely 
examine, and, for awhile, doubt. The truth in almost every 
