Lecture, introductory to the course of materia medica and pharmacy : in the Medical Department of Pennsylvania College : session of 1846-47 / by Henry S. Patterson.

  • Patterson, Henry S. (Henry Stuart), 1815-1854.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lecture, introductory to the course of materia medica and pharmacy : in the Medical Department of Pennsylvania College : session of 1846-47 / by Henry S. Patterson. 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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    the ages, toward the end, and under the law which its Maker and Master has ordained for it. Progress is written upon all the material creation. The geologist reads its record upon the sides of the primeval hills. He finds it engraven upon the ancient rock. Its evidences meet him in the caverns of the earth. It is equally the primal law of all organization. Motion is life, and stasis is death. No sooner have the vivifying influences given an impetus to the germ than it bursls its matrix, and commences its career of ceaseless activity, the first pause in which, is inevitably the last and only one. Sobernheim has well said, that the sum of life is expressed in one significant German word, Vorgang. Neither is this activity blind, aimless, and at hazard. It is under definite law, and to distinct ends. These accomplished, comes then the repose of death. So is it with the physical man, and so with the intellectual. Evolution, bloom, and in- volution, is the history of each and all. No bed of rest, but the grave, and even there, though the concrete mass may cease from its labours, the busy atoms will know no repose, but seek new combinations and new spheres of activity. If we examine the history of the human intellect and its labours, we will find proof and illustration of the same fact. Little by little has science been built up, by the combined efforts of all ages and nations. Like industrious ants, have the co-laborers brought each his little store to add to the general sum, and from time to time, there has appeared one whose greater grasp has enabled him to shape the mass into order and comeliness. In no other way can any human science ever grow ; and hence the impudent absurdity of all those new systems which pretend to neglect and despise the past. Minerva may spring full grown and armed from the forehead of an Olympian Jove, but not so is the offspring of man's intellect born. Its beginning must be in the microscopic germ, and the feeble bantling needs much careful nursing, let its after growth be what it may. Paracelsus, with the stupendous audacity that was so characteristic of the man, dedicated his book to all those who thought new things better than old, simply be- cause they were new, a class of persons not yet extinct on the earth, nor apparently likely to be. He could publicly burn the books of the fathers of medicine, as useless, since superseded by his own, and yet the good old world went quietly on her way, and Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, still hold the highest seats in the temple of medical science, while Paracelsus is remembered only as the prince of quacks. Such must be the fate of all who forget that progress is the law of science. Herein moreover, seems to me, to lie the