788 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
practice long before he entered the walls of this institution, 
and no one who knows the work that he has done can pos¬ 
sibly doubt his possession of the necessary scientific attain¬ 
ments. You will therefore, gentlemen, have the science of 
pathology presented to you, not as formerly in a disjointed 
shape, as though there were one pathology of the horse 
and another of the ox, but the science in a connected form. 
You will be told something of the elements of which disease 
consists, and you will be led step by step to those complex 
forms which you will meet with in the course of your practice. 
Then, as incidental subjects which have recently been 
added, your attention will be called to botany and therapeu¬ 
tics. Some of you, I am glad to say a considerable number 
of you, have already had the advantage of a summer course 
of botanical lectures; and all of you, I doubt not, will have 
the satisfaction of sitting before Dr. Cobbold during this 
session, and acquiring the knowledge which he is so capable 
of affording you in the important subject of parasitic diseases 
of stock. But to return to the subject of botany. It is a 
source of great satisfaction to everybody, it is a source of 
congratulation to the governors of this institution, that the 
subject has been introduced here, and has been placed in 
such very efficient hands. 
Those of you who had the advantage of attending the 
field excursions, I am quite convinced, will not need that I 
should say anything to recommend this subject to your 
intimate attention; but perhaps you will permit me to say, 
that it is simply impossible to overrate the importance of a 
knowledge of botany, in ordinary country practice. 
It is a strange circumstance that botany, of all divisions 
of the curriculum, has been the least popular. Years back 
I can recollect the mere mention of it tit this table excited an 
expression of anything but satisfaction on the faces of those 
who were listening to the lecturer’s words; but I am equally 
proud to know that the first experiment, the mere giving of 
a course of lectures of two months’ duration with practical 
instruction has been quite sufficient to convince the students 
that it is not only an interesting but an exceedingly valuable 
addition to their studies. 
The subject of therapeutics will also form a part of your 
summer course, and it will be my endeavour in speaking on 
that subject to point out to you as I did during the last 
course, the fallacy which is expressed in the statement, that 
medicine has no principles. Ifthink that we were quite in a 
position to decide at the end of that course that it is possible 
to prescribe for a definite reason, and that it is not at all 
