HE TRUE LAW OF CURE

Born April 10th, 1775;--Died June 4th, 1843.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

It is a remarkable and at the same time a terrible and most lamentable
fact, that the practice of medicine--an art of daily necessity and
application, most nearly affecting the dearest interests and well
being of mankind, and to the improvement of which we are encouraged
and impelled by the strongest motives of interest and humanity, of
love for our neighbor and emulous zeal for professional skill and
superiority therein--should, after a probation of so long a period,
and recorded experience of at least two thousand years, still remain,
as it confessedly does in most respects, so little understood and
generally of such doubtful and uncertain application.

The present age, unlike any that has preceded it, is peculiarly one of
rigid, radical and fundamental examination. Everything in the Heavens
above, or in the Earth beneath, is tested and retested; analyzed,
synthetized and submitted to the crucible of stern reason, and the
logical conclusion of experience; even to the extreme of possibility.
This is true not only of the material universe, but of all mental
and moral conditions, of social, political and even religious
institutions. Nothing, in this day, and especially in this country
of free thought and liberty of speech, is taken for granted merely
because it can lay claim to the honors of a great antiquity, or can
number thousands or millions of adherents. Vast differences are to be
observed in governments, churches, creeds and social practices; and
all, however opposite and apparently antagonistic, are working out a
solution to the problem--

"WHAT IS TRUTH?"

Conservatism is fast dying out, hidden and smothered by the
ever-flowing tidal-waves of progression. Radicalism ceases to become
radical, by the daily and hourly recurrence of startling discoveries,
and new, unheard-of, and unexpected adaptations of old laws.
The mistakes of to-day will be found to be mistakes, and will be
rectified. Whenever and wherever freedom holds her sway, evil must
work out its own destruction, and good enthrone itself in the hearts
of those benefitted by its benign influence. In this spirit, and with
such views, let us look at the progress of Medical Science that we
may learn from the experience of the past to correctly estimate the
developments of the present and aid wisely in the working for a more
glorious future.

Medicine