INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
319 
tery in which the highest prize may be drawn by careless in- 
dolence, or self-satisfied ignorance. You must work, if you 
would gain the wages of labor. 
Having thus called you to exertion, I may very properly 
be required by you to point out the best plan of beginning 
and conducting your investigations. Your first object will 
be to select some particular subject of inquiry. You may 
choose some indigenous plant, whose medicinal properties 
have already attracted the notice of the profession, but have 
not been thoroughly studied; or you may search amidst the 
rubbish of popular and domestic practice, and find something 
perhaps of value which has hitherto lain concealed; or, finally, 
you may examine the plants of our woods and meadows, and 
guided by the odor, taste, or other obvious property indicat- 
ing some power of affecting the human system, may perchance 
be led to the discovery of a useful and hitherto unknown me- 
dicine. I would recommend the first course; as the catalogue 
of officinal or semi-officinal plants is already numerous, and it 
is desirable to sift this thoroughly before attempting to aug- 
ment it. 
In the very beginning, you must take care to avoid the too 
common error of explorers, of determining at all events to 
find something new — a determination which is apt to deceive 
the fancy into the belief that it has discovered what it has in 
fact only invented. Let your search be after truth, and no- 
thing but truth. It may be as important to deprive a counter- 
feit medicine of its false credit, as to add a new one, though 
genuine, to the mass of circulation. You will perform an im- 
portant service, if you can prove satisfactorily that one of the 
received medicines is quite valueless. 
Having selected the subject of experiment, you are first to 
ascertain its effects upon the human system in health. Try it 
upon yourselves, upon your friends, upon persons of different 
sex, age, and temperament, beginning with doses which you 
know to be safe, and gradually increasing till its activity or 
inertness is evinced. Ascertain its influence upon the brain 
and nervous system, upon the stomach and bowels, upon the 
