Excerpt from Introductory Lecture to the Winter Course of Anatomy, in the Philadelphia School of Anatomy, Delivered on Monday Evening: November 2d, 1840

Medicine implies an acquaintance with Anatomy; Physiology or the science of life; Pathology, or the investigation of the effects of disease upon the body; Surgery, at once a science and an art; Obstetrics, that most delicate branch of our profession, m which the life of both mother and offspring are often jeoparded by unforseen accidents; and I am sorry to say, 1n many instances by the culpable 1gnorance of the practitioner. Materia Medica, or a knowledge of the various medicinal substances, animal, vegetable and mineral, with their natural charac ters and properties, as well as their application to practice; and Che mistry, which, by unfolding the laws of the combinations of matter, as far as those laws are discovered, not only throws light upon the nature of remedial agents, but also developes many principles and powers of the earth on which we dwell, and the atmosphe1e which we breathe, whose influence on the body of man, whether 1n health or disease, 1s almost incalculable. Over this wide field the student must not travel hastily, but with the careful, untiring diligence of an explorer; and with every one of these branches of knowledge he must obtain at least a tolerable acquaintance, bef01e he can hon01ably ofier himself to his fellow-men as qualified to take the charge of their health and their lives. But it has never been supposed that all of these branches are equally useful or important to the physician, or that the same degree of attention is due to each of them from the student; and it is very certain that. Some of them may be mastered with far less expenditure of toil and study than others. If any one of them deserves to be called more important than all the others, it is Anatomy and without doubt, this department is more strictly and properly a science; more in teresting in itself and in its relative bearing upon other branches of knowledge; more fully calculated to train and discipline the mind of the student to quick perception and acute observation; and in a word, more completely essential to the formation of those habits of thought, and that character of close and studious investigation, which are so invaluable to the medical practitioner, than any of them. Anatomy is the basis of the pyramid of medicine, - and according to the strength and extent with which this only sure foundation is laid, will be the firmness and durability of the superstructuie He that erects the fabric of a medical practice upon any other basis, builds his house upon the sands, and although the arts of a bold and shameless empiricism may gain him a temporary reputation; although he may succeed for a time, by practising upon the natural credulity of his fellows, yet the imposture will one day prove his ruin; for when the rains descend, and the winds blow, and the floods come, his baseless fabric must fall, and great will be the fall thereof.

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