Fifteenth annual commencement of the Medical Department of Georgetown College : valedictory address / by Silas L. Loomis ... ; March 2, 1865.

  • Loomis, Silas L. (Silas Lawrence), 1822-1896.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fifteenth annual commencement of the Medical Department of Georgetown College : valedictory address / by Silas L. Loomis ... ; March 2, 1865. 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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    agency of these higher beings, as prompted by either kind or malevolent sentiments toward man. And thus for centu- ries theories having as little coherence as wreaths of smoke upturned each other in frequent succession. The human intellect, after thus vaguely groping for ages in the endless maze of theories, at last discerned, that such efforts could never lead to any true scientific results; that the study of nature must begin with the observation of facts; and that general laws could only be ascertained by generalizing facts. Under this, all theories that could not be sustained and verified by experiment were set aside, and thus science was at once relieved of a vast amount of the so-called learned accumulations of ages. Francis Bacon thus became the great instaurator of science. From this enunciation of Bacon followed a great transi- tion from what might be called the theoretical or specu- lative period to the experimental. Every theory was uow tested by the crucible and the balance, and this led to a fundamental law, that ponderable mutter was indestructible, and had neither been increased nor diminished since creation., Under this law, whenever matter disappeared by combus- tion, eremacausis, or by any other cause, its loss must be ac- counted for. The change manifest was merely that of its form, and the new condition must contain precisely all that had disappeared from the old form. Thus the balance of Lavoisier became the means of correct analyses of pondera- ble material. These rigid and inexorable processes of investigation soon changed the whole aspect of the sciences, and by the close of the eighteenth century there was scarcely a single link connecting us with the past. Astrology had become as- tronomy ; alchemy, chemistry ; and vague imaginative the- ories had given place to general laws based on the immutable logic of well-attested fact. Patient, thorough, indefatigable investigators interrogated nature in every part of her far- reaching domain and made record of her responses. Accu- rate observers, with new and improved appliances, all brought to the common treasury the results of their exami- nations, till, at length, from these began to unfold the grand