454 
DR. PROUT ON CHEMISTRY. 
dustry and perseverance, almost every thing is within our power, 
we find comparatively little done, and very few working. How 
is this? What is the reason that so important and interesting a 
branch of knowledge should be so unaccountably neglected, and 
that our knowledge, in fact, respecting it is little farther advanced 
than it was twenty years ago ? How is it that a physiologist will 
sit down and rack his brains and invention to push mere mecha¬ 
nical principles to the most improper and absurd lengths; or 
choose to wander and lose himself in a labyrinth of metaphysical 
subtleties and errors, rather than attempt the investigation of 
what, by a little well-directed industry, is completely within his 
power? The circumstance, I confess, has always appeared to 
me most unaccountable, though I trust the opprobrium is about 
to be removed, and that this most important and interesting point 
of knowledge will soon obtain all the attention it deserves. The 
subject falls properly and exclusively within the province of the 
physician, and to the young and industrious aspirant it offers an 
immense field, where the prizes are many and great, and the com¬ 
petitors few. Mechanical principles, as applicable to physiology, 
are limited at best, and they have already been pushed as far as 
they safely can be; but here every thing is new, at least at pre¬ 
sent, and apparently unlimited ; for chemistry, perhaps more 
than any other science, depends for its advancement upon the 
gradual development of human knowledge. 
That the physician of another age will be as familiar with the 
operations of the animal economy as he is at present with its ana¬ 
tomy, I have not the least doubt. The minute and ultimate ana¬ 
tomy is unknown to us—the minute and ultimate chemistry will 
always probably remain so; but all the great and obvious changes, 
like the great and obvious parts of the living machine, are within 
our power, and will be known : and, to push the comparison still 
further, I will venture to predict, that what the knowledge of 
anatomy at present is to the surgeon, in conducting his opera¬ 
tions, so will chemistry be to the physician, in directing him, ge- 
rally, what to do and what to shun; and, in short, in enabling 
him to wield his remedies with a certainty and precision, of which, 
in the present state of his knowledge, he has not the most dis¬ 
tant conception. 
