Introductory lecture to the course of chemistry / delivered by Professor Draper.
- John William Draper
- Date:
- 1841
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Introductory lecture to the course of chemistry / delivered by Professor Draper. 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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![Now each one of these changes is the result of a philosophical act; it is brought about by physical laws. And do you inquire what these have to do with the study of medicine, and doubt whether a knowledge of them will be of value to you 7 Look round upon this world, and you Will find your answer. Its land, its water, and its atmosphere, its climates, its rocks, and valleys, are all accommodated and filled up with living things. The seasons that come round each year, and bring their warmths and their frosts, come with a reference to living things. How is it that the palm tree and the cocoa-nut do not grow in Lapland, or the reindeer frequent the verdant fields of the torrid zone 1 Why is there one region given to the corn-plant, another to the orange, and another to the fig ] The white bear loves the leaden skies of the poles and his native iceberg, far better than the beautiful sun-sets of eternal Italy. The Bengal tiger never roams out of the jungles of India. Thus, then, you see that each region of the surface of the earth has its pro- per tenant, and each tribe is kept within fixed boundaries; and these boun- daries are not bars of brass, nor impassable ranges of rocks. If the walls be invisible, the prison-house is not the less secure. Nature, you see, on all sides takes advantage of these physical agents of which we speak, and has made HEAT her goaler. There are tribes that are in the sea, and tribes that are upon the shores; some live in the deserts of Africa, and some among the snows of Greenland. The hand of Nature marks off by physical agents the surface of the globe, and gives each division its proper tenants. And then, she wraps them in instincts that bind them in their destined localities; instincts that be- come a part of their being. Does the Condor ever forget the tops of the Andes, or the Albatross the dark heavings of the ocean ? To teach you some of these laws is my duty. And where the subject is so vast, and the powers of the teacher so small, you will not expect a fair or a complete view. T cannot tell you of the multiplied inter-wTorkings of those laws, which bring the world into the condition we see. I cannot picture before you the wild scenery, the changes it has undergone. I cannot show you the springs of lite, nor spread before you the machinery that brings it to a close. There is no rock that has not been the witness of the mortal agony of living things ; there is no grain of dust that has not been alive. I have not that en- chanter's wand that calls into existence birds, and fishes, and beasts. I have not those black-letter books which reveal the constitution of the material world. But then I can point you to Nature, and tell you how atom and atom conflict, and how one law springs out of another, though I cannot trace their commencement or their consequences, and you will see that they are beautiful, and believe that they are true. This, I say, is the proper mode by which we should study medicine. I would have you regard yourselves in the light of engineers, your duty is to repair a broken machine. First of all, then, learn its construction ; obtain clear and distinct views of the connection of its several parts, and the precise mode of action of each. By the indiscriminate use of medicaments, or by resorting to active processes, you may sometimes succeed in breaking up forms of disease, as a watch that has stopped may be made to go again by the rude jolting and shaking of an ignorant man. But to find out the cause of its derangement, to reinstate it fairly, and without damage to its former integrity, requires one who](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21115990_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
