Medical and physical researches, or, Original memoirs in medicine, surgery, physiology, geology, zoology, and comparative anatomy / by R. Harlan.
- Date:
- 1835
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Medical and physical researches, or, Original memoirs in medicine, surgery, physiology, geology, zoology, and comparative anatomy / by R. Harlan. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
29/778
![It is time that we should cease to look to foreigners for mas- ters and teachers. I have hitherto endeavoured to excite attention to this Science, by showing that men of the most powerful minds, and of great acquirements, have found it an interesting and instructive field of inquiry. The perusals of their published works are most emi- nently calculated to afford knowledge and gratification. It must be admitted by all, that Comparative Anatomy is as essentia] to the practice of Veterinary Medicine, as a knowledge of the structure of the human body is, to the cure of the diseases and accidents incident to mankind. The evils to which our do- mestic animals are subjected, and the consequent loss which so- ciety sustains, by unmerited neglect in this respect, are too obvi- ous to need illustration. In Europe, Colleges have been established, and Professorships endowed for the express purpose of teaching the history and cure of the diseases which affect our domestic animals. The gradations of organization; and the final purposes con- templated by nature in the construction of her living machines; two interesting and much agitated subjects in the philosophy of natural history, receive their only clear illustration, and incontro- vertible evidence, from the science to which I would wish to urge attention. In the doctrine of final causes, which has so often excited the disputations of Theologians and Philosophers, this science is cal- culated to lend essential aid ; the naturalist, by its light, discovers at every step, striking peculiarities in the economy of animals, founded on corresponding arrangements of organization; there is throughout nature, to be observed, such wonderful adaptation of means to ends, so constant a relation between peculiarities of structure, as must strike the most sceptical mind with the convic- tion, that the whole is a work, which prescient Omnipotence was alone adequate to conceive;—the hand of creative wisdom to execute! Without the aid of Comparative Anatomy, the physical con- struction of our globe would be enveloped in a mantle of impene- trable obscurity; the most inviting and essential circumstances connected with the study of Geology, consisting in those rocks and earthy strata containing organic remains. “ It has been discovered, that mountains and districts are some-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21934605_0029.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
