Address. 
97 
diametrically opposite in their nature. A blind reliance on 
experience, without sufficient intelligence to appreciate its 
character and bearing, is called in modern acceptation em- 
piricism. This word, according to its etymology, denotes a 
dependence on experience; and when experience is ju tiy ap- 
preciated, and those analogies are carefully traced, by the 
light of which alone experience can be made available, then 
is such dependence on experience proper. But the term 
by modern usage is always taken in the sinister sense, of ex- 
perience falsely appreciated, and irrationally applied ; in other 
words, it is made synonymous with quackery. 
Empiricism or quackery, as here explained, may be entirely 
the result of ignorance and its usual concomitant presumption; 
and the measures which it pursues do not necessarily imply 
moral turpitude. Jt is far otherwise, however, when an indi- 
vidual professes to depend upon experience which he knows to 
be ill-founded, and to rest upon analogies, which he is sensible 
all the while are fallacious. Here empiricism becomes char- 
latanry, and the ignorant but w^ell-meaning pretender is con- 
verted into the crafty mountebank. 
I trust I have said enough, gentlemen, to convince you 
that empiricism ought to be discountenanced by the pharma- 
ceutical and medical professions, as a blot upon their callings, 
and as the cause of a vast amount of suffering to the com- 
munity. According to the views which I have taken, no me- 
dicinal agents should be presented by either profession to popu- 
lar attention as remedies for this or that disease; as doing 
so is equivalent to inviting ignorant individuals to quack on 
their own persons, or on those of their friends and neighbors. 
However boldly they may be called remedies, they cannot be 
such unless judiciously applied ; and I am sure that no one 
will have the hardihood to assert, that the people at large 
can be taught the practice of medicine in a newspaper ad- 
vertisement or a handbill. 
As connected with the ethical principles of your profes- 
sion, I have been led to notice empiricism as a fruitful source 
of involuntary error in professional conduct, if not of com- 
promise between moral rectitude and self-interest. But to 
Vol. I—No. 2 13 
