bourgelat’s introductory lecture. 643 
acquire the only and valuable experience which arises from nu¬ 
merous careful and accurate observations and comparisons, the 
simple theorist, without practice, cannot develop or search to 
the bottom, or at all determine the truth and the use of the 
knowledge which he thinks he has acquired: his materials are 
valueless to him, until he has put to the test their strength and 
durability ; and the edifice of professional reputation and beneficial 
exertion can never be erected. 
It is only, then, in the union and just combination of theory 
and practice, that we can hope to see the perfection of our art. 
They are, or ought to be, inseparably united; they mutually 
illustrate and establish one another; they increase by common 
consent the sum of medical knowledge; they reciprocally fix the 
propriety, the value, and the stability of every principle. An 
imagination which yields too easily to appearances, or is kindled 
by the fire by which it is often surrounded, and would wander 
and be lost amid the devious paths and threatening rocks of 
theoretical disquisition, is arrested by the powerful salutary in¬ 
fluence of practice, and soon finds itself rivetted by the evidence 
of facts alone; and when observation alone would tend to plunge 
the surgeon in error, theory comes on her part to his succour, 
places him on his guard, and reminds him of the care with which 
he ought to guard against the deception. She shews him the 
importance of being perpetually attentive to the circumstances 
which essentially distinguish the various objects; discovers to 
him the emptiness and worthlessness of mere conjectures ; teaches 
him to be cautious in adopting even truths themselves; and to be 
on his guard against the dangerous tendency to turn into general 
truths those which cease to be so from improper application; 
and to circumscribe and limit, by numerous experiments of vari¬ 
ous kinds, those which were formerly recognized. 
Unhappily, we are to a great degree destitute of both these 
guides; but human surgery, which owes the first faint light it 
received to the sacrifice of animals; to the rougher and inac¬ 
curate examination of the bodies of those that were immolated 
for the subsistence of man, and to the curiosity, doubtless cruel 
but useful, of some philosophers eager to seek in the entrails of 
