LECTURE. 
Introductory to the Course of 1868-9, 
IN THE 
MEDICAL DEPARTMENT 
OF THE 
University of New York, 
BY 
HENRY DRAPER, M. D., 
PROFESSOR of physiology. 
NEW YORK: 
JOHN SARELL, PRINTER AND PUBLISHER. 
72 Broadway. LECTURE. 
Introductory to the Course of 1868-9, 
IN THE 
MEDICAL DEPARTMENT 
OF THE 
University of New York, 
BY 
HENRY DRAPER, M. D., 
PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY. 
NEW YORK: ' 
JOHN SARELL, PRINTER AND PUBLISHER, 
72 Broadway. LECTURE. 
The pleasant duty of bidding you welcome to the Medical Depart- 
ment of the University of New York, has fallen to me this session. 
Among you I recognize many rendered familiar by a persistent at- 
tendance last winter ; some who though graduates, desire still far 
ther to pursue the advantages offered, while a large number are but 
recent acquaintances, or else are the kind friends of the Institution. 
To all the Faculty give hearty welcome. 
And as a medical atmosphere surrounds us at the moment, let us 
use the minutes we have to spend in company with one another this 
evening, in looking at what is before us for the winter's work ; why 
it is that we are going to be five months together; what you have a 
fair right to expect, and what we ought to give? To the student 
such information cannot fail to have interest, while to the non-pro- 
fessional hearer it will lend a clue to the mysteries of the supposed 
" awful doings" in a medical college. 
The ground work of a medical education is to be given and re- 
ceived. You are to learn how the disordered actions of the human 
machine are to be recognized and remedied, and the principles on 
which repairing is to be conducted, as well as the detail of execu- 
tion. How are we going to carry out this plan? 
The study of medicine is divided into two parts, theoretical and 
practical; or principles and their application. In the course we fol- 
low, the former is that which has first to be attained, and then the 
latter comes naturally to be grafted upon it; just as in a garden, the 
sound stock receives the applied scion, and eventually brings forth 
the perfect fruit. 
We have to lay a basis of general information, or rather to super- 
add, to that which you have already acquired, certain additional 
branches. A student has something more to do in a medical col- 
lege than merely to learn the names of a number of diseases, their 
most prominent symptoms, and as is popularly said, "what is good 
for them he must acquire as far as may be a knowledge of the 
why and wherefore. The common idea, that a doctor is a walking 
prescription book, must not be true of you. Medicine is unfortu- 
nately only too empirical, too prone to doing without a reason, for 
us to sacrifice the exact knowledge we have. We see but too fre- 
quently a new remedy discovered, which is given for every kind of 
unmanageable complaint, as for example, iodide of potassium at the 6 
present day. If it does good, well; if not, we are no worse off than 
before. It cannot do the patient any harm, the baffled practioner 
says. 
Let us then look at our medical college course and see of what it 
consists, and what chance it has of fulfilling your expectations. 
Chemistry, anatomy, and physiology are the basis, and have to be 
studied to a large extent at first. Chemistry declares to you the 
principles that rule living, as well as dead or inorganic matter; 
and though it may be sneeringly said, that no chemist can, with his 
boasted science, form from dead matter even the lowliest organism 
and impart to it the Promethean fire; we acknowledge that we 
are but beginners and bunglers in the laboratory of the great 
Arch-Chemist. Why should we not try to do what we may? 
Why should we disparage our own intellects and say, " I cannot 
comprehend this-it is meant to be an impenetrable mystery-my 
profane eyes have no right to peer into the secrets of Omnipotence." 
We have a brain, and the desire of knowing ; let us apply ourselves, 
Investigate, and know all the knowable ; the total is small enough. 
The medical student, without such dissuasion, is only too apt to 
make the mistake of supposing that chemistry is altogether discon- 
nected from true physic, and that he must study it because one of 
the seven professors, before whom he has to pass an examination for 
his degree of Doctor of Medicine, teaches it. But he will find, as 
he gains a deeper insight into the subject, that chemistry lies at the 
bottom of the explanation of many of the most complicated, as well 
as of the simplest, phenomena. Dismiss from your minds the obso- 
lete idea, that all the operations of the body are of the so-called vi- 
tal kind, and ruled by a different series of laws from those which 
maintain in the exterior world. That is only a relic of times when 
to everything not plainly understood, mysterious cause was attri- 
buted, when not only the planets required their guiding angels, but 
every alchemical operation involved the captivity or liberation of 
refractory spirits, and a compact with the devil. 
I shall have during the course to show you the bearing of chem- 
istry on our race, and to prove that man himself, from one point of 
view, bears a most essential resemblance to other machines for evolv- 
ing power. Apparently a permanent organism, he is in a state of 
perpetual change ; no part of him is free from continued wasting 
away, and as continued replacement. His aspect of material identity 
is all a delusion, for in no two consecutive moments is he the same. 
The body he had a moment ago is not the body he has now, and 
long before the commonly supposed seven years are out, he is, with 
trifling exceptions, over and over again, renewed. In a single year 
enough material enters the body to build it up a score of times, and 
the life of an old man, therefore, represents the form that more than 7 
ioo tons of matter have assumed. His actions have been the trans- 
mutations of the light and heat derived from the sun by that mat- 
ter when it became a part of plants. Man is an ever changing mass 
of substance, consuming away and turning into smoke and ashes, 
and according to the very laws that hold for a piece of wood or lump 
of coal, under similar circumstances. The graceful figure, gentle- 
men, you may have clasped in your arms-the form of the fair one 
to whom you may have sworn eternal fealty and affection, is as fleet- 
ing as the kiss you have pressed on her lips. You are forsworn in 
the moment of taking your oath-you have grasped but a shadow, 
as transitory as the flame of a candle. 
At the same time that chemistry gives such explanations of the 
general principles ruling animal bodies, it descends to a variety of 
practical applications, enabling us by the examination of the fluids 
to detect disease, and in many instances, to point out the remedy. 
Anatomy, in its turn, treats of the relations of the parts of the 
body one to another. Taking the bony framework as a basis, and 
pointing out its component parts and their peculiarities, it lays there- 
on the muscles, fascia, fat, and skin, and indicates the devious course 
of arteries, and veins, and nerves, and the position of the various 
organs. 
Though the path through which you have to pass in making a 
practical acquaintance with this branch may disgust the senses at the 
first sight, and seem to shock the moral feeling in desecrating the 
temple of the soul, yet you will soon find an enchantment in the 
work of the scalpel and forceps, and be only too likely, little proba- 
ble as the uninitiated may deem it, to neglect other things for the 
fetid and dangerous table of the anatomist. 
Physiology will bring before you the minute structure of parts and 
the function of the various organs. It will show you how a morsel 
of food taken into the mouth is on the eve of passing into a beauti- 
ful laboratory, which the delicate operations of a chemist may 
mimic, but not equal, in its exquisite actions. Ground, as in a mor- 
tar, by the teeth ; acted on by potent acids and alkalies in the diges- 
tive system ; filtered through fine-pored membranes, and suffering in 
its purified state farther chemical changes, it becomes eventually a 
part of the body; but only, so to speak, for a moment, for having 
reached the highest point it is to attain, it cannot remain still, but 
starts in a retrogade metamorphosis, yielding up the power it held, 
till it returns to the simple binary form of water, carbonic acid, or 
ammonia, once more, rejected from the system, under the eye of 
the sun to be reconstructed through a plant form into fit food for 
man. 
It will show you how the body, like a fire, has its inward com- 
ing draughts of air and its outward going rush of burnt products, 8 
whether as gases, liquids, vapors or solids, and how in the glow of 
fever or in the icy cold of cholera, the similitude is still kept up, 
just as the smith gains a more fervid heat by forcing more air upon 
his coal, or damping the fire, causes it, almost extinguished, to 
smoulder away unseen. 
It will point out to you beautiful mechanisms, taking advantage 
of every needful physical principle to keep up a perpetual intercom- 
munication throughout the body, a system of ramifying canals to 
carry the destroying oxygen and the repairing nourishment to every 
part, and to remove away the wasted products of decay. We may 
boast of our railroad and canal and river and road communication 
through the body politic of this United States-that every city and 
town and village is chained to the great centres-that our telegraph 
can speed a thought with infinite rapidity throughout the whole- 
yet where does that completeness stand when we reflect that the 
foot of a fly cannot touch the skin without the knowledge of the 
sentient brain, and that the minutest needle prick will penetrate 
with certainty our system of blood vessels The eye, the ear, touch, 
taste, and smell each in its turn, will instruct and elevate our 
minds, and lead us to graver reflections on the relation of man to 
man, and to the aggregate of human particles we call society. 
Such are the groundwork branches of the study of medicine. 
Make yourselves familiar with them, for without'these no man is 
fitted to treat the disorders of the complicated machine we have to 
deal with. As well might the savage, who cannot distinguish a 
cogwheel from a spangle, attempt to regulate the rate of a delicate 
chronometer. 
But you may say that in all these branches there is much that is 
of no practical use, and that you do not want to burden your mind 
with it. Remember that a man cannot recollect just the isolated 
facts he wants. To be of use they must be strung on a theoretical 
thread, that by their connection we may bear them in mind, as 
reasoning beings should And do not in your studies insist too 
strongly on knowing only what is practical; what will turn into 
dollars and cents. Know a little for the sake of knowing, and 
have a refuge in yourselves from the cares of every day life. Be 
able to rise above the petty torments of contact in the world with 
others, to something which will calm the mind, and give the men- 
tal rest you need for fresh struggles. 
The fatigued brain, overloaded in any part by the ever recurring 
impressions of a single train of thought, must have a rest, and one 
would think, to be repaired, must cease to work a while. But, sin- 
gular anomaly, rest to a portion of the brain does not come as to 
the body with " Tired Nature's sweet restorer," but with the work- 
ing of another part. A balance, an equality of action must be kept 9 
up, or even bad we the brain of Newton, his fate, insanity, must 
overtake us. The busy mind must turn to some other, it may be 
trivial object; and hence we see great men delighted with the gos- 
sip of the family circle, and Cincinnatus digging in his garden. 
Do not however think, that I would ask you to become triflers 
or visionary theorists. Be fully developed men, able to use not one, 
but all the faculties you have, and not confined in a narrow circle 
of everyday duties, repeating like an ant or bee the doings of your 
predecessors. 
But to continue with the course the college presents before you. 
The first-session student having given a large share of his attention 
to the above topics, should subsequently finish grafting thereon the 
application of the facts learned. He will be taught by his professor 
of materia medica, the origin, appearance, and properties of medi- 
cinal agents, their actions in the body, in health, and disease. The 
professors of practice of medicine, surgery and obstetrics, will show 
him how to detect the seat and nature of disorders, together with 
the results of the multitudinous accidents men are liable to from the 
budding moment of life, till the last agony shows the futility of far- 
ther effort. 
In the old time, it was substantially at this point that the student 
was left when he graduated from college, and went out to fight 
disease. Often he was alone, and had to depend on his own infor- 
mation. I have heard a distinguished practitioner say, that when 
he first graduated, if any one approached him with the air of want- 
ing advice, he wrould feign to have important business elsewhere, 
so as to get out of the way. 
By the newer system, the student acquires confidence, because he 
is forced to make out cases for himself, and yet, under the direction 
of those who can both aid and criticise. This University was the 
first institution in the country to inaugurate the system of bringing 
sick persons before the class in Clinics, which has now become so 
important a feature of medical education. In them the student can 
see the practical application of the principles he has learned, and 
become familiar with minor diseases, as well as with those that are 
more severe. Clinics, combined with a proper amount of hospital 
practice, which gives familiarity with the gravest disorders and acci- 
dents, and yet need not convert a man into a mere sight seer, bind 
the theoretical principles in the brain. 
And yet you must not believe that at this point, you will become 
perfect physicians. Something more is necessary than that your 
friends should call you doctor, and that the well-framed diploma, 
with its mysterious sentences, should look down from the office 
wall on the bewildered patients. Something more than bottles with 
alarming contents, whieh seem to indicate your skill; tumors, and 10 
deformities of people you never saw, or the freaks of nature in the 
young of our own species. You must have experience. This is, 
perhaps, most rapidly obtained by becoming a member of a hospital 
staff, though that is apt to lead to routine and ignorance of the 
minor complaints, on which, often enough, future success depends. 
A connection with an older practitioner, who can give you the fruits 
of his experience, and furnish you with the digested results of years, 
will be most valuable to you. 
Above all, do not fancy that you are going at once to reap the 
result of your short studies, and spring into practice by means of a 
capital operation. That result is only certainly to be reached by 
continued application, and as far as chance is instrumental in such 
matters, a knowledge of why babies squall is far more likely to help 
you. 
When your medial education has reached thus far, one reflec- 
tion will force itself upon you, the immensity of the subject, and 
the impossibility of being a proficient in all its branches. To those 
of you who intend to make the country their sphere, such reflections 
must be curbed as best may be, for justice to the community you 
practice upon, demands that you should be prepared to combat all 
diseases you may meet. But in the larger towns, a man may without 
impropriety, give almost all his time to any branch he feels best fitted 
for. Indeed, it is only through the effort of the specialists, that 
advance can be hoped for, and he who lives at a distance from the 
centres of thought, must make himself familiar with what others 
are doing, instead of depending on himself to do everything. Do 
not let the oppressive drudgery of practice force you into stagnation, 
but keep up to the times. Have a hobby if you must, my country 
brother and general practitioner, but do not ride it to death. You 
cannot be a specialist, or you will be like the doctor, who, when 
called to a case of colic in a child, said " give it this powder, it will 
produce fits. I know nothing about colic, but I am death on fits." 
Such is the course, gentlemen of the first session, which we shall 
lay before you. To our friends of last year, the second and third 
course students of this, there is little to be said beyond the word of 
welcome. We are glad to see you, and will do our best to conduct 
you successfully to the end. We lay before you the mental pabu- 
lum, you have only to consume it, and make ready to combat dis- 
ease. "Combat disease?" I had better say, " Aid nature," for 
you will find that that change is necessary in the old formula. A 
generation ago, the idea of the physician was, with lancet and 
blister, and syringe, and pill-box in hand, and heavy reinforcements 
to the same in his saddle-bags, to attack disease in its stronghold, 
and expel it at any cost. The strength of the patient was sacrificed, 
so that many a one fell from weakness, who would, if unmolested, 11 
have gotten well of himself. Tedious convalescence, profitable to the 
physician incidentally, was a common occurrence ; but the sum total 
of advantage derived by the patient from his medical attendant, was 
far less than it is now. The great principle that a multitude of 
diseases have a tendency to get well of themselves in a definite 
time, and that in those cases, the duty of the physician is merely to 
sustain the patient, and relieve annoying symptoms, was not recog- 
nized. Bleeding in such diseases as typhoid fever, for example, 
with the object of checking the violence of the disorder, took away 
from the patient valuable substance without affecting the duration, 
excepting in those cases only too frequent, where death followed 
when the tissues called in vain for the materials they must have, and 
failed to get them. 
This system was the cause of the great spread of homoeopathy, 
for that was really an expectant school of medicine, amusing the 
mind of the patient with the idea that he was taking physic, and 
giving him that which had no curative virtue. You will find that 
you too, are sometimes forced unwillingly to take this disingenuous 
course, and minister to the mind diseased, for the sick man will in- 
sist on taking something, whether he needs it or no. The harm- 
less placebo, though distasteful to you, may, perhaps, be justified on 
the ground, that your object is to cure the patient, and that may 
only be done when his mind is satisfied. 
But far be it from me to advise you to practice homceopathically, 
and recognise such absurdities as " Similia similibus curantur," or 
" A medicine is stronger in proportion as it is diluted." These will 
not bear the test of reason for a moment, and though it may be 
urged'that small doses of calomel are more efficient than large ones 
in producing a constitutional effect, what would you say of one who 
expected to cause an epidemic of cholera in this city by throwing an 
ounce of Epsom salt into the Croton Reservoir ? 
There are, however, many disorders which require the active in- 
terference of the physician, and in which rest and attention to diet 
do not suffice. Perhaps no group shows this more plainly than the 
miasmatic fevers, such as the common chills and fever. Here, by 
fortune, we know what weapon to use, and although the propeities 
of bark, or more truly its alkaloid, quinine, were discovered by acci- 
dent, yet a sound reason for their appropriateness is, according to 
Dr. Bence Jones, now known. Quinoidine, an organic substance, 
closely allied to quinine chemically, exists naturally in the tissues, 
and it has been suggested that its absence is the cause of the disease 
spoken of. Dr. Jones finds quinine in the tissues three hours after 
it has been taken into the stomach, while one of our graduates, Dr. 
R. B. Maury, shows that to get the effect of the drug quickly, and 
with the least amount, you should put it under the skin, so that the 12 
lymphatics and the capillaries may rapidly transmit it to all parts. 
Quinoidine appears to be furnished under ordinary circumstances, 
from the wine and vegetables eaten. 
Assist nature, then, whenever you can, and combat disease when- 
ever that seems needful. Even in such diseases as pneumonia, the 
former advice can be taken, and results far superior to those by the 
combative treatment reached. 
And always aim at ascertaining the nature of the disorders you are 
called upon to treat, what their origin, and how they are producing 
their morbific effect. A great step forward is being made, in ascrib- 
ing to low vegetable and animal forms, a series of effects hitherto 
unaccounted for. But you may say, of what interest is it to know 
that? where are its bearings on the sufferings of humanity? Why 
should we care about the microscopical or chemical cause of diseases ? 
Let me put before you a case in point. The patient, a man of 
standing and wealth, seemed to have every thing that could be de- 
sired, and that money or influence could procure. Yet he had car- 
ried with him for forty years a perpetual torment. His skin was 
affected with a persistent itching, all the time getting worse, until 
life was about to become unbearable. Numbers of prominent phy- 
sicians had been consulted both here and in Europe ; no eruption 
was visible, aud no correct idea of the complaint was attained. All 
kinds of treatment were tried, all kinds of variation in diet, ab- 
stinence from this, eating of that, baths of many varieties, and yet 
no relief. At last the suggestion that a microscopic vegetation was 
at the bottom of it, caused the application of corrosive sublimate, 
an agent destructive to such plants, and, as if by magic, he was freed 
from his annoying parasite. What do you think the effect of such 
a case in your practice would be? What wonld be your standing 
among your compeers ? or to take the dollar view, what would the 
public think of it? And yet how natural when the cause was 
known to apply such a remedy. 
Again, in the case of cholera, a cryptogamic or fungous origin has 
been suggested, and if this be true, appropriate remedies will no 
doubt be ere long invented, to prevent their access into the system, 
or to cause their destruction when they have entered. In the case 
of the poison of the Australian black snake, which acts with a 
similar rapidity, it has been shown by Dr. Halford, that the venom 
really owes its poisonous qualities to the implanting of certain pecu- 
liar cells in the blood, where they multiply with great rapidity, and 
at the expense of a constituent of the red blood discs. If the life of 
the patient can be sustained till these have exhausted the ingredient 
theymust have from the blood, he gets well, and the disease disap- 
pears with the death of the germs. Now what is more natural, 
knowing these facts, than to look for a substance which may destroy 13 
such cells, and yet not kill the patient? It seems that alcohol fulfils 
the condition very nearly. 
Medicine, though at present very far from being an exact science, 
must sooner or later take that rank. It is your duty to aid all that 
you can in the progression forward. Do not give way to the idea 
that the operations of the body are too mysterious ever to be ex- 
plained. Every day they are having a new light thrown upon 
them, and chemistry and mechanical laws, and the application to 
our case of the simpler operation of the lower animals, are forcing 
explanations upon the unwilling. That the saliva is a fermenting 
juice, acting on the starch and sugar we eat, just like so much 
yeast; that the gastric juice is concerned in a purely chemical 
operation, adding atoms of water to albuminoid bodies, and 
making them peptones ; that respiration is for a purely chemical 
purpose, the causing of combustion and liberation of force in the 
body ; that circulation is an affair of capillary attraction in 
large part; these well established facts show the way forward to 
the explanation of a multitude of functions now totally inexplicable. 
Hear what Simpson, a distinguished and progressive physician, 
who has been knighted for his attainments on the other side of the 
water, says of the future of the healing art: " But that dav of 
revolution will not probably be fully realized till those distant days 
when physicians-a century or two hence-shall be familiar with 
the chemistry of most diseases ; when they shall know the exact 
organic poisons that produce them, with all their exact antidotes 
and eliminatories; when they shall look upon the cure of some 
maladies, as simply a series of chemical problems and formulas ; 
when they shall melt down all calculi, necrosed bones, etc., chemi- 
cally, and not remove them by surgical operation ; when the bleed- 
ing in amputations and other wounds shall be stemmed, not by 
septic ligatures or stupid needles, but by the simple application of 
haamostatic gases or washes; when the few wounds then required in 
surgery shall be swiftly and immediately healed by the first inten- 
tion ; when medical men shall be able to stay the ravages of tubercle, 
blot out fevers and inflammations, avert and melt down morbid 
growths, cure cancer, destroy all morbific organic germs and fer- 
ments, annul the deadly influences of malaria and contagions, and 
by these and various other means markedly lengthen out the average 
duration of human lile ; when our hygienic condition and laws shall 
have been changed by State legislation so as to forbid all communi- 
cable diseases from being communicated, and remove all causes of 
sickness that are removable ; when the rapidly increasing length of 
human life shall begin to fulfil the ancient prophecy, ' the child 
shall die an hundred years old; ' when there shall have been 14 
achieved, too, advances in other walks of life far beyond our present 
state of progress ; when houses shall be built and many other kinds of 
work performed by machinery, and not by human hands alone; 
when the crops in these islands shall be increased five or ten fold, 
and abundance of human food be provided for our increased popu- 
lation, by our fields being irrigated by that waste organic refuse of 
our towns, which we now recklessly run off into our rivers and seas ; 
when man shall have invented means of calling down rain at will; 
when he shall have gained cheaper and better motive powers than 
steam ; when he shall travel from continent to continent by sub- 
marine railways, or by flying and ballooning through the air." 
Now what is there impossible in all this, when you remember what 
this century has done? 
If you feel the necessity for relaxation, when your labors permit, 
let me earnestly advise the study of the connection, mentioned a 
few minutes ago ; that of the lower animals with ourselves. There 
is the key to a knowledge of much that is mysterious, for in the 
lower animals, those experiments made by nature for us, as Cuvier 
called them, you will see the simple form, and detect the elementary 
principles, upon which our complicated structures are developed. 
And the watchful physician will ever look for what is of benefit to 
his race, though it may be in the operation of the lowest animated 
form. 
Do not think that you cannot applv information thus gained to 
the case of the higher animals, and to ourselves. Bear in mind 
that the whole series of animals is a continuous chain, and that we 
are but the present top link. We know not what the future has in 
store. We have commenced where all commence, as a single cell, 
nay, even as a mass of protoplasm, and only differ in this, that we 
have passed through the typical stages of all below, till in our 
development we have overtopped the rest. The same chemical 
elements enter into the composition of the bodies of all, and the 
same general laws dominate over them. All must live on food that 
can be burnt, all respire oxygen to support the burning, all dismiss 
burnt products from their bodies. Nay more, all derive their 
powers from the same source, the glorious orb of day, the cause of 
every sign of animation on the globe. Well might the Aztec nation, 
so ruthlessly crushed out of existence by the Spaniards, in their fearful 
Mexican mines, adore the sun as the type of the deity, for on his 
beams, hangs all the life of the earth. Let our pride be tempered 
by the reflection, that our boasted powers depend on that distant 
fiery star, just as much as do the languid motions of the low-formed 
hydra; that both acknowledge alike his genial power when they 
move into the comforting warmth ; and will come at last to believe 
in the relationship. Let it be true that we have approached more 15 
nearly to the highest form that matter can assume under the laws <5f 
the Almighty, we are still but the sport of the agencies that sur- 
round us, as well as is the lowest plant. Our will would strivein vain 
against a few months obscuration' of the sun ; we should perish 
away with all the rest of animated nature. Let our earth recede 
farther in our winter season, from that luminary, as she has done in 
previous time, and as she will do again, when as astronomers express 
it, " the eccentricity of her orbit increases," and we shall vanish like 
a dream, our place being occupied by sheets of ice, and massive 
ever-gliding glaciers, as was the case hundreds of thousand of years 
ago. Let us thank Heaven that our life is of such microscopic 
duration, that so tremendous an event can be contemplated calmly, 
and that we can with selfish complacency, pity those who will be 
driven hither and thither to escape the torrid heat of summer, and 
the awful cold of winter, in those days of near approach and far 
recession from the sun. 
And so again wifeh equal mind, because our life is but a span, 
may we speculate on the eventual destiny of our swift-moving sun, 
and his attendant train of planets. We are whirling with fearful 
velocity through space ; the earth around the sun ; the sun around 
its centre in the distance Pleiades ; and that with the whole group of 
visible stars, and far ofl'Milky Way, most probably around some other 
still more distant centre of attraction. Revolution rules the uni- 
verse. What if we should strike, not some attenuated comet, but 
fairly against another body of an equal size ? 
Of recent days such effects have been much studied, and from 
the collision of masses of small weight, aided by delicate means, 
such as the electric thermometer, the laws which rule both small 
and great have been found out. Astronomy, that queen among 
exact sciences, has lent her aid ami pictured to our eyes on the 
grand scale, the results the mind had by its reasoning foreseen. 
Natural philosophy tells us that motion suddenly arrrested turns into 
heat. A little metallic mass dropped on a slab, from a few feet of 
distance, gives rise to a sensible warmth. A swiftly striking rifle 
ball may melt itself when it impinges on a hard surface. The 
minute aerolite, perhaps only a single grain in weight, coming at 
forty miles a second into our atmosphere, sets itself on fire by con- 
tinued concussion against that tenuous body, melts, may even vola- 
tilize. So with the lordly meteor moving two score times as quickly 
as the ball just parting from the cannon's mouth, a long train of 
melted and volatilized matter is left in its track through the air. Some 
wish to have us believe that the light and heat of the sun, which is 
equal to the burning of millions of tons of coal every hour, has, as 
an origin, the perpetual concussion of multitudes of such small 
planets against his body. 16 
If we therefore, or worse yet our sun, Soo,ooo miles in diameter, 
met in full career with its peer, then indeed should we be consumed 
away as with fire, in the twinkling of an eye, and the place where 
our system had been would appear to the view of the distant 
observer, as a blazing mass of vapor, extending beyond where the 
farthest planet had pursued its course, and ready to commence the 
slow cooling and contraction, marking the genesis of a new world, 
to be covered in future days, with its successive groups of upward 
progressing animals. 
Is there not something in such reflections to elevate the soul, and 
make it feel in contemplating these workings of the divine plan, 
that the mortal clog cannot hide our connection with the great Ar- 
chitect. Made in his image, an inspiration of his breath, or as one 
half the human race believe, a part of Him we must be, to com- 
prehend His stupendous ways. 
And this leads me, before we part, to right myself in one thing, 
where a misapprehension may have arisen. I have insisted on the 
brotherhood of animals, the intimate relationship, the close con- 
nection. Why is it that such a doctrine is in some sort repugnant 
at the first sight? A something within us says, " am I only a 
hydra ? are the words true which sing ' poor senseless worms are we ?' 
is there no mark, no distinction? Can I not escape such a hateful 
fellowship ?" 
You may indeed, for your distance above in one most important 
and overruling particular, is so enormous, that it is only to the eye 
of the physiologist that the connection is visible. That nervous 
system, the instrument of the immortal force, which peers above 
and below, into the past and into the future, is in you a perfected 
instrument, while in these humble forms only its infinitesimal rudi- 
ment can be traced. As well might you attempt to produce the 
grand harmonies of the full chords of the organ from the ore of 
which its metal tubes are formed, as these to try to rival you in the 
manifestations of the mind. Well do the words of the Latin poet 
express our peculiarity and difference from them, " Mens agitat 
molem et magno se corpora miscet." 
The tired hound may, in his evening dream, run through the 
stirring incidents of the day, the view halloo, the fierce chase, the 
many doublings, and the final death ; the monkey may with won- 
derful address and absurd verisimilitude, mock the actions of his 
master ; but where is that higher reason, that glow of the divine 
spark, which makes us like our Creator. Our bodies, weak ves- 
sels, are indeed alike, but when we have shaken off the frail tene- 
ment, who can tell what higher step in our development may next 
succeed, to put yet a greater gulf between us?