EDITOllIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
289 
of that which is occult. All this calls for mental culture, 
and involves the absolute necessity of study to ensure success. 
A person rightly instructed will refrain from adopting what 
are designated the means of cure, until he sees clearly in his 
mind the consequences that in all probability will be the 
result. It is true he may not be able, at all times, con¬ 
fidently to predict, yet from his previous experience and a 
knowledge of the governing laws, he will always have just 
grounds to anticipate what will take place. Now, we hold 
that nothing can be more conducive to this desirable end 
than a familiarity with the collateral sciences—those which 
more immediately come to the aid of medicine. They not 
only strengthen the mind by enabling it to reason upon 
“ cause and effect,^’ but so train it, that the favorable and 
unfavorable, the probable and improbable, are deliberately 
weighed before a step is.taken, or an act committed that 
may be irrevocable. 
Thus is shown the advantages to be derived from a study 
of the sciences as applied to medicine, and the superiority 
that must ever be possessed by the man of education over the 
mere charlatan or pretender. Fortunately at the present 
day the latter finds no place in the estimation of the dis¬ 
cerning and the wise, nevertheless there are those who do 
occasionally resort to him. Such we warn, as success can at 
best be only the result of chance. It would be easy to 
enlarge here, but we think enough has been already advanced 
to prove our statement. The student of medicine must be 
emphatically a student of science, and this renders medicine 
a life-long study, the practitioner having ever to be learning. 
His vocation calls for an insight into the organic kingdom 
of nature, vegetable as well as animal, and a familiarity with 
the inorganic elements of the globe likewise, and the laws 
that govern even the universe itself. Thus his knowledge 
becomes based on science, the best and firmest of all resting- 
places, because it is truth. It has been well said— 
Many are apt to forget this from the very constancy of 
its use, just as in the daily use of sight and hearing they 
cease to think of the inestimable value of those senses. 
The medical practitioner is different from other men in seeing 
xixvi. ' 19 
