ON LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC STUDIES, 
119 
la conclusion, I may be asked to say as a mechanic what I tliink can be the nature 
and source of this amazing power of gun-cotton. In reply, let me ask, Who shall say 
what takes place in that pregnant instant of time when a spark of fire enters the charge, 
and one-hundredth part of a second of time suffices to set millions of material atoms 
loose from fast ties of former affinity, and leaves them free every one to elect his mate, 
and uniting in a new bond of affinity, to come out of that chamber a series of new-born 
substances ? Who shall tell me all that happens then ? I will not dare to describe the 
phenomena of that pregnant instant. But I will say this, that it is an instant of in¬ 
tense heat,—one of its new-born children is a large volume of steam and water. When 
that intense heat and that red-hot steam were united in the chamber of that gun and 
that mine, two powers were met whose union no matter yet contrived has been strong 
enough to compress and confine. When I say that a gun-cotton gun is a steam-gun, 
and when I say that at that instant of intense heat, the atoms of water and the atoms of 
fire are in contact atom to atom, it is hard to believe that it should not give rise to an 
explosion infinitely stronger than any case of the generation of steam by filtering the 
heat leisurely through the metal skins of any high-pressure boiler.— Quarterly Journal 
of Science. 
ON LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC STUDIES IN CONNECTION WITH 
MEDICINE. 
BY J. H. BALFOUR, M.A., M.D., PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND BOTANY, 
The following passages are extracted from Professor Balfour’s Opening Lecture of the 
Course of Botany at the Edinburgh University, in May last:—Natural Science, in all its 
departments, has now become an important part of education, not merely on account of 
its connection with professional studies, but also from its value in mental training. It 
exerts a most beneficial influence on the observant faculties ; it calls the perceptive powers 
into action ; it teaches the student to note the resemblances and differences among ob¬ 
jects ; it promotes the formation of orderly and systematic habits; and it enforces ac¬ 
curacy, both of observation and of expression. It also benefits the mind by investing 
the objects around us with a new interest, and it supplies healthy and cheerful occupa¬ 
tion at all times. 
The value of natural history as an educational science consists mainly in its teaching 
the student to observe truly and to note accurately. The prosecution of it ought not to 
be confined to any one profession, such as that of medicine. It should, to a certain ex¬ 
tent, constitute a part of a liberal education. Why should not a portion of the summer 
be devoted to this subject by those who have been prosecuting their literary studies du¬ 
ring the winter mouths, and whose long vacation might thus be in part profitably em¬ 
ployed in preparing the way for their future professional career ? Such an arrangement 
would, in my opinion, be much better than attempting to extend the curriculum of arts 
in the direction of classics and mathematics. It is surely of importance that the student 
of arts should know something of the objects in the material world with which he is 
surrounded ; that he should enlarge his views of nature, and have a sympathy with that 
science which teaches the structure, functions, and uses of the organized beings which 
people the globe, and of the unorganized matter which forms the crust ? 
In relation to medicine, botany must be viewed, not only as furnishing the medical 
man with valuable information in regard to the affinities and properties of medicinal 
plants, and enabling him to substitute one species for another with safety in circum¬ 
stances where the usual remedies are not at hand ; but it must be regarded as an impor¬ 
tant branch of preliminary study, which trains the mind of the student to those habits 
of observation and diagnosis which are so essential to the successful prosecution of his 
profession. The study of the physiology of plants, too, enables him to observe in a 
simpler form many of those phenomena which are more complicated and obscure in the 
higher orders of living beings. This is specially true of the functions of fertilization 
and embryogeny, the examination of which by eminent botanists, both in this country 
and on the Continent, has tended in no small degree to promote the advancement of ani¬ 
mal physiology. 
The training of the mind in correct'methods of observation gives to botany and the 
other natural-history sciences their value as instruments of preparation for professional 
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