Editorial . 
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your journal. Knowing full well that the value of property is first to be 
established before there can be any general interest in its ownership, I do 
not ask to occupy the pages of your journal with the Tjnprofitable discus-, 
sion of mere priority, but desire to present from the records , the data 
upon which my strictures in that lecture were based, and are still main¬ 
tained. As these records are not generally accessible to your readers, I 
believe this will not be uninteresting. 
Very respectfully, 
Your obedient servant, 
J. II. WATTERS, 
Prof.'Physiol., Pathol ., and Clin. Med. in the Missouri Med. College. 
Iii the year 1849 I commenced attendance upon medical lectures in the 
University of Pennsylvania, being already somewhat , imbued with the 
principles of mathematics and natural philosophy by previous studies. 
With these principles, which I considered immutable, I could not recon¬ 
cile much that was then being taught me. For instance, I could not see 
clearly how matter could be inert and at the same time endowed with 
active properties. At that time the only works of Dr. Carpenter to 
which I had access were his “ Human, Physiology” (our text book) and 
his article “Life,” in the Cyclopcedia of Anatomy and Physiology. In 
this last the doctrine which he advocated was, that matter capable of 
assimilation is endowed with dormant vital prof erties which are developed 
T ' T ■ ^ -* • TT ve had n r *- only inert matter*with active 
