274 
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
principles to every member of society, more especially to 
those who have the preservation or restoration of the health 
of that society in their charge. 
From every source capable of furnishing information or 
yielding products available to the use of man, chemistry has 
drawn her resources; and, in her estimation, the most appa- 
rently worthless substance is held with a regard equal to that 
with which she appreciates the diamond. In her eyes they are 
both regarded as elements employed in the formation of the 
material world, whose characters and properties it is her 
province to investigate; whose affinities she is called upon to 
discover and record, and whose combinations possess an in- 
terest in proportion as they manifest more or less intricacy 
and harmony. To her view 
" All are but parts of one superior whole, ' 
Whose body nature is — and God the soul." 
Strange as it may appear, and unexpected as may be the 
enunciation, the fact is nevertheless true which chemistry has 
ascertained, that in the fabrication of the vast universe by 
which we are surrounded, and of which we form so insignifi- 
cant a portion, nature has employed but fifty-one or fifty-two 
elementary substances ; and that all the various forms under 
which matter presents itself to us, owe their existence to the 
infinite variety of combinations of these elements among each 
other. The material composition of the body of man, the 
lord of the creation, is precisely identical with that of the 
flowers of the field and the stones of the quarry; each contain- 
ing in its due proportion the elementary bodies known as ox- 
ygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon, united with other sub- 
stances necessary to produce and sustain its structure, or in 
other words, to endow it with its appropriate form. 
The beautiful system of laws regulating and controlling all 
the combinations, developed by the chemical philosophers of 
the present century, exhibit the prevalence of the most perfect 
order and symmetry in the formation of all the compounds of 
which the universe is composed. Rough and misshapen as 
the form may be, in which many an aggregate presents itself 
