COMPARATIVE PATHOLOGY. 
299 
There is one thing which has gratified me in your work, and 
has convinced me that many of your contributors are perfectly 
competent to this mode of advancing medical science ; and this is, 
the very philosophical spirit in which many of the articles are 
written, and the circumstance of your basing your pathology on 
physiological views. The many occasions you have furnished 
of illustrating physiological pathology, I perceive have not been 
neglected by several of your contributors. The independent in- 
fluence of the organic or ganglial system of nerves, although 
taught long before I wrote on the subject, was, I believe, first 
applied to pathology by me ; and it has been very ably illustrated, 
with reference to the diseases of the lower animals, by Mr. Youatt. 
I hope that he will continue his investigations into the patholo- 
gical relations of this system of nerves; for I am convinced that 
it is to this quarter especially that we must refer a great many 
of the earliest changes from the healthy condition, the numerous 
sympathies attending internal irritation or slow organic lesion, 
and the modus operandi of many remedial agents. 
The attention you have directed to the diseases of a consider- 
able variety of animals has induced me, on several occasions, to 
avail myself of the information furnished in your work ; and l 
expect to derive further knowledge from your labours, which are 
well calculated to throw light upon many of the more obscure 
subjects with which I have been, and shall for a short time 
longer be, engaged. 
Permit me to hope, that yourselves and your contributors will 
proceed as you have begun— in the cultivation of comparative pa- 
thology and therapeutics ; and that you will have the regard to 
human pathology which I have suggested — that, in short, as 
cultivators of the same science, although directed to different ob- 
jects, you will not neglect whatever may come within the scope 
of your investigations calculated to serve the cause of medical 
knowledge generally. 
In conclusion, if the circumstance will serve to convince you 
of my estimation of the importance of comparative pathology and 
therapeutics, I may state, that the volumes of your Journal are 
placed in my library amongst works most frequently referred to 
in the course of my researches into the nature and treatment of 
disease. 
I am, gentlemen, yours, & c. 
James Copland. 
Bulstrode Street, 
20th April, 1836. 
