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PROFESSOR OF MATERIA MEDICA.
    LA PORTE, INDIANA!

W. & J. MILLIKAN, PRINTERS:

        '1848.

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PROFESSOR OF MATERIA MEDICA.
PUBLISHED BY THE CLASS.
    LA PORTE, INDIANA :
W. <k J. MILLIKAN, PRINTERS.
         1848.
45 
 
 
              Indiana Medical College, Nov. 29th, 1847.
   Prof. Deming,
                Dear Sir:
                         At a meeting of the Students of Indi-
ana Medical College, convened at  the Amphitheatre, W ednesday
the 25th inst. Josse Wasson in the Chair, H. S. Hahn, Secretary,
it was unanimously resolved, that a  committee of three  be ap-
pointed, to solicit for publication a copy of your very  interesting
public address, introductory to your course of Lectures, deliver-
ed before the citizens of this place, and the students and alumni
of the  above institution.   We, the committee, would add,  that
by complying with the above, you will not only reflect honor up-
on yourself  and credit to the institution, but confer a great favor
upon the Medical Public in general.
                          Yours Very Respectfully.
                      Cha's A. Thompson, )
                      John Cutler,        >  Committee.
                      J. M.  Havens,      )
                                 Laporte, 30 Nov. 1847.
  Messrs. Thompson, Cutler and Havens,
                                        Gents:
                                              Your letter of
the 29th inst., requesting in behalf of the class, a copy of my in-
troductory  lecture, is before me.  If the class think its publica-
tion of service to the cause of Medical education in this  region,
the manuscript is herewith tendered them.
                  E. DEMING, M.  D.,
                     Prof. Mater. Med. and Therapeutics,
                                  Indiana Medical College.
   Messrs. Thompson, &c. 
ADDRESS.
  Within a few past years,  two individuals, under very different
circumstances, have given utterance to some of the most compre-
hensive and lofty conceptions of the human  mind.  The one had
a highly cultivated intellect, thoroughly furnished with the richest
stores  of classic antiquity.  He  said  "ideas were crystalized
thoughts."  The other was a printer's boy, on whose mind the light
o( science had scarcely shed  its feeblest rays, and to whom the
great fountains of knowledge were just beginning to be unsealed.
In his daily avocation behind the press, in answer  to  the question
of a bystander,  he declared, "thoughts  make tracks."  Combine
both together, and in an intellectual sense, we have presented be-
fore us, a  vast  element of power.   That ideas  are  crystalized
thoughts, and that these thoughts make  tracks,  reveal  the sover.
eignty and controling power of mind, in all and every thing that
relates to  human progress, or the advancement  and well being of
man.  Much is continually spoken and written about the progress
of the  present age, and many suppose that the  masses have now a
clearei perception of the true and beautiful, both  in  nature and
art, than heretofore.  I am not disposed  to enter into  an examina-
tion of this matter now, being willing  that all should have the
most favorable  views  of the  onward march  of knowledge and
true science,  and anxiously  desirous that they  should rise  to uni-
versal and undisputed  empire.
  What I wish to insist on at this time is, the necessity of creating
and sustaining a  higher standard of sound medical education, and
if what I may offer for your consideration shall not appear to you in
the luminous and beautiful forms of crystalization,  I do hope that
the truths conveyed in the thoughts offered, may at least make tracks;
leave some traces of indelible impression, some enduring  reality,
something of permanent and lasting usefulness.   No subject,  in
its nature, is so difficult to bring clearly  to popular apprehension
as that of medicine  and its adjunct  or  collateral sciences.   Man
himself is a living, moving, organized mystery.   Whatever we see
of his relation to objects that are immediately around him  in the
material universe, we  find that  there are  influences constantly
operating to produce changes of those relations,   A large portion 
4
of these influences are hidden in the secret  and invisible regions
of causation.  Their effects are manifest in disease in all its pro-
tean forms, from the slow organic and constitutional derangements
gradually removing the pins that hold the "earthly house" together,
to those fatal epidemics whose track is marked by the sweep of the
destroying angel's wing.
   The complex formation  and arrangements of the human  ma-
chine, all tend to confirm the feeling of mysteriousness, as well as
the secret effects of remedies and influences  on  the frame in dis-
ease.  Life, in its essential elements  with connecting particulars
as manifest in the motions  of the lungs, heart,  and great blood-
vessels—in the nervous system—the fluids, in fine, the aggregate of
every thing that constitutes man as he is—all  belong to the  great
system of  Nature's arcana; which can only be understood  or ex-
plained  after years of patient research, toil,  and calm and  perse-
vering investigation.
   If this faint outline of the mystery  of man's  organization, lia-
bility to  change and disease be true, a fact which  every passing
day presents to our  observation, it certainly must require  a high
standard of medical education to successfully counteract  all the
various and combined influences operating in disease.
   The first requisite in a sound medical  education is a thorough
 knowledge of the human structure,  as it appears both in  health
and disease.   This can only be obtained by a careful examination
 and inspection of all the separate organs that collectively make up
 the human frame.  A knowledge of their arrangement—the rela-
 tions and contiguity of parts, can only be revealed by the anatomist
 The form  divine of man was said by the ancients to he the highest
 cud most  perfect form in the universe, inasmuch as man, being  a
 microcosm, constituted a little world within himself.  A profound
 knowledge of anatomical structure is of the most important use,
 from the great fact that it not only  reveals quality, but developes
 function.  This position need not be enforced by argument.  We
 all feel and  see its truth.  If we but look at the mechanism of the
 heart and lungs, we see at once their  function and adaptation to
 their specific uses.  The same may be said of all the other organs.
 This doctrine of forms is not only applicable to man, but if care-
 fully examined, will extend to every being that lives and moves in
 the universe; reaching up to the highest intellectual  forms  in the
  world of  light, and descending down  through  infinite gradation^ 
5
«ven to the "puny nations that tinge with purple the surface of a
plum."
   These organic forms are endowed with appetencies, which in.
dicate, in an especial manner, the necessities of the system.   Nu-
triraenta! substances are by them assumed.  These pass  through
"various modifications  in  digestion and assimilation, and  are  ulti-
mately applied as constituent vital molecules of the  system.   By
this vital process,  health and comfort and vigor are dispensed to
the animated system, whilst effete molecules  are  eliminated by
the emunctories as useless, if not injurious.  This play of affini
ties by the  material organic forms united in man,  producing cat-
enations, unities and harmonies of action  in the  entire  frame,
displays many important and familiar phenomena under the control-
ing powers of the vital forces."  The controling  power  of all
these forms, is through "that refined tissue" denominated nervous.
It is more slowly evolved, and is of a more attenuated  fabric, and
affords to the "conservative organs a more perfect ability of func-
tional  exercise.  Above all else, however difficult to our compre-
hension, this is the media of the manifestation, if not the residence
<of intellect.
   When all these organs and sympathies are in  "easy play, and
are free and  buoyant," health is the result.  This  is the physio-
logical state of man.
   After all, these combinations that so much administer to our well
being, when practiced indiscreetly, in excess,  or even in extreme
deficiency, as well as "the atmospheric circumfusa  by which we
are surrounded," all serve to disturb this natural harmony.   Thus
the connections of all the  harmonious associations of these organic
forms  in the human body  may be broken.   A "perturbed 6tate of
organic action, with inquietude, distress and wasting," may follow
at any period of life.   The relations of intellect, as well  as of the
organic harmonies, are severed, and man may  then  be viewed  as
"the  6port of contending impulses and chemical contingencies,"
and under an enervated influence of the vital energies, he falters,
suffers distress, and  sinks.  This  constituttes  the Pathological
state of man.
   One of the master minds of our profession says: in our researches
into the diseased condition of the human system, we need to have
particular reference to the healthy state, as it will undoubtedly be
discovered, that the morbid phenomena are tiie natural resnlts of
the system, under excessive stimuli.  From these considerations,
it is evident  that all  our studies, investigations, and researches, 
6
must at last centre in the pathological condition.  Our efforts are
to be directed to remove or mitigate disease.   And these efforts
are to influence the most complex organism  of creative power.—
Can so great a work be trusted with safety in the hands of individ-
uals who have little general scientific knowledge, and less specific
medical acquirement?   How does it happen that  on  subjects so
vastly important,  and at those points where so  many  hopes and
fears centre as do gather around the sick bed, we are comparatively
indifferent  to the qualifications of those who  profess or make
pretensions to, the healing artl
   That a higher standard of medical education is indispensable,  I
argue, not merely from the difficulties connected with the science
of life, which have been briefly  touched upon, for no one that
looks with a calm eye and  a benevolent heart on the sufferings of
humanity, but at once feels  that those individuals who are entrusted
with the  weighty responsibilities  of warding off or expelling  a
most powerful and subtle foe from  the citadel  of human   life
should be furnished at all points with the most effective armor.—
Of this scientific medicine  has a large and abundant supply, of the
recorded experience of centuries.   To all  and every thing con-
nected with the healing art calculated  to advance  it—to exalt it
into certainty, the best and  most talented minds in past ages and
at the present hour, have been and now are devoted.
 Are we prepared to  heedlessly pass by  all  this and  follow  the
dreamy  pretensions  of modern quakery?   Again, high medical
attainments in those  who practice the healing art, give confidence
and stability to society in times of great calamity and distress.—
Sydenham, in  those desolating diseases of  his  own time, which
he has sketched with  such a graphic hand,  was felt to be a tower
of strength; and the thousands he soothed, relieved, and saved
from the devouring pestilence by his skill,  fidelity, and  firmness,
 will never be known, until  the secrets of Heaven's register  shall
 be revealed.
   In our own country, and near  our own time, there is a  name
 whose memory is as  grateful as incense, for the recollection  of his
more than  martyr devotion to suffering humanity.   When the pale
 horse  and his  rider  moved in triumph  through the streets  and
 avenues of the city of Penn, who first stayed his fearful tread?   It
 was Rush.
   But  Sydenham and  Rush were trained, scientific physicians—
 they posseseed high, clear, and discriminating  minds, and  wh^p
 communities rested with confidence upon them. 
i
    A  high standard of medical education is required in order to
  meet the  wants of society in the  north  west  especially.   Every
  epoch of  human history has been  marked with either new or
  singularly modified forms of disease.  This has been particularly
  true of all the great migr&tory movements of our race in past ages.
  The irruptions of the northern hordes into the regions of civiliza-
  tion, carried  with them new and peculiar diseases  into Italy and
  the Eternal city, and in later times the return  of the  crusader!
  from the holy wars brought  scarlatina  into Europe.  The  great
  tide of immigration now setting into the north west of our country
  demands that medical men be furnished with  adequate  means to
  meet any  emergency that majfc arise from  this source, as well as
  from the whole class of diseases endemic to the country  in  which
  we reside.
    The importance of high attainments in the latter respect cannot
  be too strongly pressed upon  our consideration.  The tide of
  population that is continually rolling along the valley of the Mis-
  sissippi and spreading out on the borders of our great lakes, set-
  tling on the verges or in the bosoms of our wide extended prai ries,
  will call for skill' and knowledge in the treatment of  its  peculiar
 diseases.  All the  various  circumstances which are  connected
  with the production  and  diffusion  of exhalations from  the soil,
  will require  the  attention of the practitioner of medicine, more
 especially in  our malarious regions of country.
   Again, we  all know that no circumstances tend more to increase
  the sources of endemic influences than high  ranges  of  tempera-
 ture and calm states of the air.  The effects of these will of course
 greatly vary with the quantity of humidity  exhaled, and  with the
 "conditions of the air in respect to horizontal and vertical current;
 of electricity.  The sources of malaria may be ever so produc-
 tive, the evaporation from  them may be ever so rapid—they will
 do but little harm if the atmosphere passing ovei their surfaces
 is quickly  renewed."   It is indirectly owing to temperature, and
 the greater capacity it gives  the air for  moisture that  the marshes
 and boggy places  of temperate climates  are frequently  so un-
 healthy.
   High temperature and humidity, together with richness of soil,
 generate succulent plants,  which contain saccharine and  oleagin-
ous  principles, and carbonaceous  and hydrogeous elements, with
a portion of azote, and  which  rapidly  pass  either altogether or
partially through the alternate process of growth  and  decay.  It 
8
js ascertained during the moist states of a warm atmosphere, that
the equilibrium of its electrial conditions are disturbed—the rela-
tive electrical states of this fluid and the body considerably modi-
fied and the changes produced by the blood in the lungs somewhat
retarded."   I will here offer  an additional  remark, and that is,
that the amount of carbon eliminated by the lungs and skin is ma-
terially lessened where the atmosphere is characterized by a high
dew point—and  if the  liver does not  perform a  vicarious office,
"the vital fluid will be too  much surcharged with this element for
the healthy performance of its different functions."  I  suppose,
generally, in this region, that the dew point  is far below that of
the atmosphere.   Dr. Forry has said  we should  remember that
the baleful sirocco is nothing but an atmosphere possessing a high
dew point.   The effects of this peculiar condition, which I have
briefly referred to, have in some past seasons been deeply felt  in
our alluvial and prairie regions, and  they  will, sooner  or later.
invade all our firesides.  This audience, therefore, will not think
the speaker fastidious, or disposed to dwell on  small and compar-
atively indifferent  points, if he urges as a motive to high medical
attainment, our personal situation, locality,  and surrounding cir-
cumstances.  If these  views are correct,  and for their truth he
appeals to the recorded facts of medical history, it is then all  the
better that we bring the issue home, and as a  whole  community,
unite our efforts in promoting a high standard ot medical education
and literature.   I shall not dwell particularly on pathological con-
ditions before this assembly—by  a sound  medical education, we
comprehend surgery, chemistry, obstetrics, as well as those branch-
es to which we have more specially referred.  They are all the great
constituent elements of our science.   If anatomy  and chemistry
are the principal pillars of our edifice,  the  others constitute the
spperstructure.  United  and cemented harmoniously  together.
they constitute our temple of life.  While  we feel that the build-
ing is not completed, we  rejoice that we are  permitted to be co-
laborers in its accomplishment, and thus are  now associated with
some of the most benevolent and highly gifted  men of the present
age, as well as brought into a near companionship  and communion
of thought and feeling with a great  company of honored dead.—
If our educational standard  is high—if the medical mind of the
country is well and thoroughly trained, its  liteiature will be pure
and elevated.
  This is what is demanded by the  wants, of the  present age.-— 
9
 There has been no time since Paracelsus, when  there  was more
 necessity for solid aliment.   The medical mind has  of late been
 directed in the channels of  small rivulets instead of moving  out
 into the broad and widening streams.  Much time has been con
 suraed in  the study of synopses, abridgments, abstracts, and  the
 like.  Another  evil  is the tract  knowledge, comtaining cheap
 medical literature, if it may be called by that name.  They give
 a delineation  of some  few  prominent symptoms of  diseases,
 and then the receipt for their cure.  Veiy nearly  allied to  this.
 class  is the whole  arrangement of  the more  voluminous works
 known as  domestic medicines, which fill  almost every pedlar's
 wagon,  and which  lie upon the shelf in every cabin.  Was  oar
 professional literature of  a  sufficiently elevated  standard,  all
 this trash  would soon be consigned to the moles nnd the bats.
   We need a high  standard of medical literature and education
 from the fact of our locality and the peculiar  circumstances that
 surround us.  We occupy a central position in  the great battle
 field of quackery.   Whatever  may be  its  general  influences on
 society at large, throughout our  Union,  the valley of the Missis-
 sippi is at present its great  harvest field where it annually reaps
 golden sheaves from its nostrums, in  the cure-all  forms of pill*
 and plasters, tinctures and golden drops.
   The reason why this field is so inviting to empiricism and ignor-
 ance, arises,  perhaps,  in some respects, from the  multifarions
 nature and peculiar  phases of our population, taken together with
 their love of migration  and  change, but  more especially  from  the
 fact that by far the largest class of our diseases throughout this
 immense region are  periodic and paroxysmal.   Hence, if a travel-
 ler from Europe should visit us, from the  signs that he would  see
 all around him, he would feel certain that quack  medicines  were
 indigenous productions of our prolific soil.   This sentiment would
 be confirmed by visiting our apothecary shops, which every where
 groan  with the weight of the elixirs of life,  and those two gieat
 salvos,  the lithrontriplic and sanative  mixtures.   And if farther
 proof  were needed,  our newspapers  would furnish  ample mate-
 rials, copiously backed by the reverend  clergy.  If our  medical
 literature was of the right kind—if society would  demand high
 attainments and solid acquisition; these  things would   soon  be
 numbered with the illusions  of the past.
   That we should strive to  cultivate a high standard of medical
 literature, especially in  the north west, T argue from the fact that
two institutions, dignified with the names of Eclectic and Botaa 
10
 ical colleges are now organizing classes for medical instruction,
 and presenting false issues before the community in respect to the
 necessary professional attainments and qualifications.
   What are these?  The primary ope of the eclectic school is the
 rejection of mercury  with its  compounds,  and the exclusion of
 the mineral preparations from Materia Medica, and the manipu-
 lations of Pharmacy.   Divest this principle of the clothing  and
 drapery which those interested have thrown over it, and  it is like
 an  announcement  to the wotld that  the loss of the right arm de-
 tracts nothing from the strength of the individual man.  It simply
 makes known under the guise of science  and a  sham  medical
 philosophy,  that the potential  remedies  of the  pharmacopoeia
 which have for long years been investigated  by  astute  and pene-
 trating minds—which have been sanctioned  and corroborated by
 various and universal experience—that have 3tood  all this and the
 tests of the analytic and dissolving  fires of chymistry,  are value-
 less.  That the essence of life is found only in vegetable medicines,
 and that in their natural state, untouched by  the chemist's hand.—
 If we reject the mineral salts from the class of remedial agents,
 and rely exclusively  and  universally on vegetable  preparations
 alone, however specious in  appearance,  we have  but  a  feeble
 carrier against the invasion of a large number of our desolating
 epidemics.
   The Botanic college is unquestionably the mother of the Eclec-
 tic, at^ least so far as originality of idea and conception is concerned,
 though more definitely adhering to  its  original  faith in steam and
 pepper.  Neither of these medical sects have yet produced a re-
 spectable work on  any branch of our profession, and notwithstand-
 ing all their boasting, we have yet to catch the first glimmering of
 light from their own orbs.
   Their light is borrowed  from authentic and classical  medicine.
 In proof of this, I refer you to their programme  of studies  and
 books, and directions for students.   If nothing new is  taught—if
 their master minds have presented no new discoveries—put forth
 no standaid works on any branch—if in addition to this they have
 cut off the potential  remedies of the entire mineral kingdom, of
 what value are their instructions?   Have we any evidence  that
 they knpw more of medical botany  than Barton,  Wildenow,  or
the accomplished  Griffith.   If not, all their  pretensions go for
 nothing, all their giants are but men of straw,
  A high standard of medical education qualifies,  in an especial 
11
manner, for the exploration into the causes of diseases, as well as
the adaptation of  remedies to  counteract their influence  on  the
living system.   None but bold navigators ever push out  into  an
unknown ocean, and let their "plummets down into its resounding
depths."   Those  who confine their barks near  the  inlets of an-
cient shores, "never discover new and populous islands."  It  is
so with scientific and  professional mariners—they must qualify
themselves to  sail out of the beaten track  in order  to make new
discoveries to  benefit the race.  Medical men must have lofty and
comprehensive views, as well as the faculty of profound  observa-
tion, or persistent and philosophic research.   They  must have the
power to collate,  and arrange, and classify  facts in  all their bear-
ings,  and  in every aspect, as they are presented in the various and
ever changing forms of disease.
   This is  illustrated by the  exhibitions  of individual character,
together with  their scientific claims—their real  utilitarian knowl-
edge in the application of remedial agents in  the healing of dis-
eases.
   I will make selection of an individual who claims the discovery
of a new system, and who proposes to revolutionize the whole sci-
ence.  Proceeding on the assumption that remedies that in health
induce the chain  of morbid symptoms that constitute disease,  are
the true specifies for human ailments, he has presented a Pharma-
copiae of infinitesimal therapeutic agents to resist the varied forms
of disease from febrile  ephemera to the small pox, from the mild
tertian intermittent, to the desolating jungle fever of India.  The
practical utility of the system  has been tried on a large and liberal
scale,  with the needful facilities, and results have proved the sys-
tem to be in allrespects one of those splended fallacies of an ingen
ious fanatical  mind.   The strength of its claims  to public confi-
d ence can only be in its boldness and novelty, and so far from pre-
senting any barrier to the  onward march of active disease its only
exhibition  has been the feebleness of the spider's web.   Its vaunt-
 ed cures and  prophylactic powers have served, when of any use
at all,  to amuse the patient  by the  potency of its globules, while
nature has  performed  the cure.   It may answer among the fash-
ionably nervous of artificial society, but can be of  no avail when
violent disease lays  its strong hand on frail humanity.  In that
dread  hour, homoeopathy has been found only  another  name for
powerlessness.           *
   Contrast this with the discovery of another individual, the men-
 tioo of whose name is like the lifting up of a shield of defence, 
12
not for an individual, a neighborhood, or a nation, but  for all  oar
race.   Cast your eyes across the Atlantic, and  you will see  on
the shores of England, a man standing calm and  unmoved  in the
midst of a destroying pestilence.  While gloom  settles on every
habitation, and dismay and terror pales every countenance,  you
will see him pursuing his investigations  with  the strong,  serene
confidence of a searcher after truth.   No difficulty is  too  great
for him to master—no trials  too  severe  for  his endurance—no
opposition so strong but it is  surmounted  by the  energies  of his
mind.   The result of his investigations,  of his patient and con-
tinued research  is  victory—not  a momentary, but an  enduring
triumph—a triumph that will  remain  so long  as  disease is the
appointed inheritance of man.   In real utility and usefulness, how
vast the difference  between Hahneman  and Jeuner.   The one,
like a feeble spring, whose streams are soon absorbed and lost.—
The other,  like^he welling  waters breaking from  the  mountain
side, spreading-far  and wide their refined  and purifying influences.
   The cultivation of sound medical literature marks, in an emi-
nent  degree, a  nation's  advancement  in social  refinement and
civilization.  In  barbarous countries  and among pagan nations,
medicine consists mostly of incantations and certain superstitious
forms and ceremonies.  As the light  of science opens the under-
standing, and as  social progress advances, the healing art advances
with it.  It was  60 in Greece and Rome.   The same  fact  marks
the medical history of England, France, and Germany.
   In the attainment of a high standard of medical education, and
sound  medical literature, above all others, important responsibili-
ties rest on the American students of medicine.
   The circumstances of our  country, and the genius of our insti-
tutions, give  to American  mind extraordinary facilities for im-
provement.  Our system of  common schools, and other means of
intellectual and  moral elevation, afford ample means  for  laying
early and solid  foundations for  the  acquisition  of  elementary
knowledge, preparatory to  professional  study.  To the medical
student, the extent and  variety  of climate and  soil, temperature
and botanicdl production, together with  diseases of the different
portions of the country, an almost boundless field is opened, and
if he  enters  it  with proper training, with the determination te
make all these means subservient to the attainment of truth, and
facte  relative to his profession—if he but make his mind the great
store house, well filled, and arranged, and classified in  order, be
will  be enabled to go  forth  in the  consciousness of possessing 
13
each qualifications as will enable him  to administer  relief to hir
man suffering.
   To perfect these means, and  render them available as remedial
agents, well  regulated  medical colleges are indispensable,  and
without consuming time in the  argument, I assume it as  an  im-
portant fact, that their location  should  have some relation to the
peculiar diseases of the  district surrounding  them.  With  this
view, it seems to me important  that the north west should  sustain
its own institutions.   What great good or superior advantage
does a student gain by attending  medical courses east?   Let us
for a moment examine.   Is man differently constituted there?—
No, say you, he is  every where  the same.   Well, then,  the knife
can here reveal the same brain, heart, lungs, stomach, liver,  viscera,
nerves, bloodvessels, and the like.  If the human structure  is
the same here, then here is the place  to  study  it.  Ato  not the
laws  of chemistry  the same  here  as there?   While  natural
"philosophy  teaches the  action  of bodies one upon another as
wholes, chemistry goes into particulars," and   shows how these
bodies act upon one another by particles, and in that manner cov-
ers the whole ground.   Is the  book ef nature  any larger there
than here?  Is the action of therapeutical agents in the patholog-
ical condition  different there  from  this  region?  Do  thev know
any more of the action of antimony, mercury, iodine, and quina,
than we do?   If not,  then sustain our own institutions.   Cannot
the great operations of surgery be as  well performed and  demon-
strated here  as  there?   Are not  the  operations  of amputation,
lithotomy, tying an artery, the  same here as at the east?  Is not
every  thing relating  to obstetric  medicine  as well  understood
here as there?  Are not the means of instruction as ample?
   In the history and treatment of  disease,  there  is no essential
deficiency.   The great lights of the past shine as brilliant  here as
in trans montane regions.  The general causes of the alteration of
structure and  derangement of function are as clearly understood.
In addition to all this, the advantage of attending to the  specific
history and treatment of  western diseases is of great importance.
These are as clearly defined—their pathological condition is better
understood—the remedial agents,  with their qualities  and doses
as adapted to the abnormal state—their special adaptation to dis-
eased functions  has with us been  more clearly delineated.  All
this has been attained  by observation and experience.  If  it were
necessary to prove these assertions, I  have only  to refer  you to
hospital clinicjues  and individual  reports of cases of prolonged 
14
disease, more especially  in their  obscure intermittent forms, that
we should expect to remove in  a  few days, by the  same  rem-
edies.  I know that our views are met by the statement that we
lack   hospital   cliniques,  for  illustration.  The  importance  of
this  matter and its value to  students previous to graduation, is
greatly overrated.   With many young  men, clinical  notes have
been substituted for laborious study, and in our large hospitals, ex-
cept in peculiar and  anomalous cases of disease,  the clinical re-
marks are in general hurried and indefinite on those ordinary capes
that occur in general and common practice,  all  of which should
constitute the essentials of a student's knowledge.   The advanta-
ges of clinical  instruction are much more useful after two courses
'of lectures, when the student  will be  furnished with means  for
rendering it more available by previously having  his  mind stored
with accurate knowledge.   The same remark holds good in other
departments of our profession, that the  occasional  displays  of  the
surgical clinique are  substituted for close attention  to the laborious
demonstrations of the dissecting room.   I do not,  by any means,
object to public clinics, but they should  not have an undue weight
on the student  in influencing his mind in his elementary course.—
I speak with more confidence, as  these   views  are sustained  by
opinions expressed in the report  of the national medical conven-
tion, assembled in Philadelphia in May, 1S46.
   After referring to the protracted course of study in continental
institutions, mentioning  the subjects that are distributed through
successive years, they observe that  "clinical  instruction, both in
medicine and surgery, is reserved for the last year  or  two, after
the student has made such advances in his primary studies as  will
enable  him perfectly to understand the lessons  which are  taught
him at the bedside of the  patient."  The terms  of lectures  in
France,  and Austria, are a fraction more than  four years,  so we
discover that clinical instruction is not enforced until the element-
ary studies  are thoroughly understood.
   Again, the committee observe that "the hospitals  and poor houses
found in so many of our towns and cities, will furnish, from  time to
time, cases of every description,  while  the pauper practice  of the
country will prove no indifferent means   of imparting clinical  in-
struction."
   "Instructions gained from  these sources in  free and familiar
 conversation with the preceptor   will   perhaps  be of more avail
 than  any other, for the large number of students who occasionally
 throng the wards of hospitals, render it impossible for each one to 
15
    obtain a correct knowledge  of all the cases presented to him."
      If these observations be founded in truth,  we see at once the
    plea of the necessity of medical  colleges being founded in large
    cities exclusively,  is ovorthrown.  It seems that quiet retirement
    tranquillity, freedom from interruption and every  thing that can
    call off the attention, is as important to the  medical student, and
    equally applicable to medical colleges, as merely  literary, while
    their location is at such points as shall give them sufficient mate-
    rial.   If the argument for going east to obtain a medical educa-
    tion is valid for one, it is for all, and consequently no institution
    can be built up in  the  west.
       The western student should strive to cultivate a high standard
    of  medical literature,  inasmuch as " character begets character."
    The impressions of mind do not easily wear out.   The thoughts
    and ideas of antiquity live in all succeeding generations.  Facts
*   and principles  are enduring, and the  truths  promulgated by men
W  of  the past age live in  this.  Harvey, Cullen, Sydenham, and oth-
    ers, are still alive  in their successors.   Embodied thought cannot
    be monopolized—it will expand with the progress of the age, and
    like the sun in the firmament,  send out its heat and  light.   Our
    duty is to keep pace with the increase of medical knowledge—to
    ascertain every new fact, and to make known every thing calcula-
    ted to perfect the healing  art  and  relieve the sufferings of our
    race.   We trust the instruction in the several departments of this
    college  with all the influences that will go  out from it will be of
    utility to the present and future generations, instead of being dis-
    sipated by  time,  will move in a " deeper  channel, and with a
    stronger  current," as it descends the track of ages. 
 
.*
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