bourgelat's introductory lecture. 
647 
When the circumstances are such, that neither experience nor 
profound study could teach him the proper treatment; or when, 
after having' been a careful observer of all the means by which 
these fatal maladies have been brought to a cure, or caused the 
death of the animal, or have been converted into other diseases, 
or have been subjugated by nature alone, he vainly seeks to 
imitate the process, he is then guided by analogy as to the remedies 
' that will be proper to reject or to use. 
Always wise in the choice of the remedies that he employs, he 
derives none of his information from the recipes that form the 
riches of the ignorant. He knows that human and animal medi- 
cine would equally cease to be a science if medicines acted in the 
same manner on all subjects and at all times,—if their effects 
were not infinitely varied by circumstances which, to the super¬ 
ficial observer, scarcely appeared to differ;—if it was not ne¬ 
cessary to calculate, if we may so say, their power,—to propor¬ 
tion it to that of the disease and of the patient;—if the most 
salutary things did not sometimes become hurtful for want of a 
right knowledge of the proper time to use them, and the manner 
of applying them; in a word, if the art of healing, or rather the 
remedial measures, were not in a manner independent of reason¬ 
ing and of experience, and limited to a larger or smaller collec¬ 
tion of mixtures, the greater part of which are well or badly com¬ 
pounded as chance happens to direct, and blindly distributed. 
The administration of these mixtures is, in his hands, always 
subordinate to principles, generally true, and from which it w T ouId 
be dangerous to depart. He does not prescribe prudently who 
administers medicines capable of exciting unusual action, in 
cases where it is not advisable to effect any considerable altera¬ 
tions in the weak frame, or in diseases where patience is more 
beneficial than prompt action; but only when he reflects on the 
ordinary results of difference of climate, and orders for tissues com¬ 
posed of grosser fibres, and little elastic, more active remedies, 
while he recommends milder ones for those whose fibres are na¬ 
turally more tender and more susceptible of impression. 
He is never deficient in the patience which is so necessary in 
ascertaining the effects of remedies; and, far from imitating those 
