Introductory Lecture. 
297 
I am fully aware, that when speaking of a favourite pursuit, 
especially when attempting to recommend it to the attention 
and affections of others, it is difficult for the lecturer to avoid 
what may seem to the audience a tone of exaggeration. Per- 
haps I may be guilty of this fault in stating my impression, 
that, in addition to the claims which may be urged for the 
Materia Medica, on the score of importance, to a high station 
among the medical sciences, it possesses, when properly taught, 
a degree of interest to an inquiring mind, which might com- 
pensate for some deficiency in real value. It must be admit- 
ted that the study of medicine is considered by many as dry 
and forbidding; and is therefore entered on with reluctance, 
and, after the attainment of a superficial knowledge, aban- 
doned with pleasure. Perhaps, however, this is as much the 
fault of the mode of instruction as of the subject itself. Ma- 
teria Medica is, to a certain extent, a demonstrative science. 
The student who merely reads or hears a description of certain 
medicines, without having them before him, can form no de- 
finite or satisfactory notion of their sensible properties, and 
finds great difficulty in properly discriminating them in his 
own mind. Upon hearing the name of some one of them men- 
tioned, he may remember that it is cathartic, or diuretic, or 
diaphoretic, that it produces particular effects upon the sys- 
tem, and is administered in certain states of disease ; but he 
has rather the description before him than the object itself, of 
which he has no picture in his memory. His recollections 
are uncertain and indistinct, as they are not aided by any 
impressions on his senses, nor any vivid associations. But if, 
as in other demonstrative sciences, the object be presented to 
him, so that he may test by the evidence of the sight, and taste, 
and touch, the accuracy with which it is described, and make 
himself familiar with all its obvious characters, he will soon 
feel himself on the footing of an acquaintance, and will ex- 
perience a curiosity to know it more intimately, to learn its 
history and external relations, precisely as we all take a much 
greater interest in the affairs of an individual whom we have 
Vol. L— No. 4. 38 
