Medical and physical researches, or, Original memoirs in medicine, surgery, physiology, geology, zoology, and comparative anatomy / by R. Harlan.

  • Harlan, Richard, 1796-1843.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

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 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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    INTRODUCTION. ON THE AFFILIATION OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES. Between the physical sciences and the arts of life there subsists a constant mu. tual interchange of good offices, and no considerable progress can be made in the one without of necessity giving rise to corresponding steps in the other. HerscheVs Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. It is not the design of this introduction, to insist on the neces- sity, much less on the utility of the study of the natural sciences: —such an effort would be derogatory to the understandings of a highly civilized community. Since our existence evidently depends on the constitution of the elements of the universe which surround us, we enter the world with an instinctive partiality for this kind of knowledge ; the ear- liest operations of the mind lead us to become acquainted with the nature and properties of material creation; the earliest and most pleasing recollections of our infancy are associated with this effort; the propensity is developed with our ripening years:—arrived at maturity, in all our aspirations after perfection, in all our criti- cisms as to the true merits of every production in science, and in art, our constant appeal is to nature; To Heaven's institute of laws eternal, whose ordinances are equally revealed to us, in the slightest atom which fluctuates in the meridian ray, or in the mighty confluence of worlds. Nature', is still the theme of every one; but whilst nothing is so common as the word, how rare is the correct ap- prehension of the term! To the closet of the metaphysician we would willingly consign the fruitless inquiry into the nature of final causes, and confine our researches to the study of accessible laws. But, nature dis-