Medical inquiries and observations (Volume 1-2).

  • Rush, Benjamin, 1746-1813.
Date:
1819
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical inquiries and observations (Volume 1-2). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    LECTURE I. Gentlemen, MY business in this chair is to teach the institutes of medicine. They have been divided into physiology, patho- logy, and therapeutics. The objects of the first are, the laws of the human body in its heaUhy state. The second includes the history of the causes and seats of diseases. The subjects of the third are the remedies for those diseases. In entering upon the first part of our course, I am met by a remark delivered by Dr. Hunter in his introductory lectures to his course of anatomy. In our branch (says the doctor) those teachers who study to captivate young minds with ingenious speculations, will not leave a reputation behind them that will outlive them half a century. When they cease from their labours, their labours will be buried along with them. There never was a man more followed and ad- mired in physiology, than Dr. Boerhaave. I remember the veneration in which he was held. And now, in the space of fortv years, his physiology is it shocks me to think in what a light it appears.* Painful as this premonition may be to the teachers of physiology, it should not deter them from speculating upon physiological subjects. Simple ana- tomy is a mass of dead matter. It is physiology which infuses life into it. A knowledge of the structure of the hu- man body occupies only the memory. Physiology introdu- ces it to the higher and more noble faculties of the mind. The component parts of the body may be compared to the materials of a house, lying without order in a yard. It is