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An Introductory Lecture delivered at the opening of the course of Medical Lectures at Dartmouth College, Aug. 2d, 1855. By ALBERT SMITH, M. D., Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics.

GENTLEMEN :-We are again assembled within these Halls consecrated to MedicalScience, to pursue a new course of professional dicipline and training; to again listen, compare and digest the elements of our great profession. I welcome you to these pursuits. I welcome you to labor, to mental discipline,-to indomitable perseverance, without which no satisfactory success can be attained.

If the deity which presides over this place could give us an oracle as in olden times, with what plainess would it not tell us, that this is not the temple of idleness, and that it only aids those who abhor and shun this vice, and are devoted body and soul to energetic and persevering labor.

We have come up here to work, to toil, to observe, and to gain by these means, a mental discipline that will enable us to investigate the daily occurring mysteries of our profession. I more particularly wel come you to vigorous effort, for every returning day reminds me, that, in the shortness and in the midst of the hurrying scenes of human life, we have too little time to learn, what it is really a shame we should not know.

We trust, whatever good derties may preside over our time hallowed institution, we may never be conscious here of the reign of any of the drowsy divinities-but that the quick eye, the active perception, and the eager spirit will be altogether in the ascendant. With as much as every medical student has to do, never should the enquiry of old find a place, "Why stand ye here all the day idle?"

It is but recently, that it was deemed hardly necessary that a physician should have a scientific education; it was supposed that if his natural powers were good, he could by dint of observation and experience, fulfil all the requisitions of his calling. There was formerly much said about men having a natural tact for this or that; we have heard in our day of natural bonesetters, of Indian doctors, of botanic and eclectic doctors, whom nobody supposed to be burdened with much book knowledge- and many have imagined that there was really some natural tact, predisposition or inclination to this profession from very infancy, so that no one could be a true physician without this, be his scientific education what it might. And it was also inferred, that if he possessed this tactus eruditus, he would be a good physician, even if he scouted and discarded as useless and troublesome things, books and book knowledge. We have seen in the noble profession of Theology, that all those sects, which formerly depended upon the unassisted efforts of nature in their ministers, are now the strenuous advocates of a learned ministry- they have found that no inspiration so sustains and strengthens like that of an enlightened, developed and capacious intellect. It is idle, in our day, to talk or even think it possible, that physicians can sustain themselves, who will not become familiar with the science and literature of the profession.

I propose then to speak of the necessity of science and experience, as indispensable requisites to every student in medicine.

If I read the signs of the times rightly, they call for a learned and scientific education in the followers of our profession. All those pretensions to knowledge and tact, without the discipline of study and books belong alone to quackery; and, indeed, even what might be called an enlightened and observing experience, that ignores the science of our art, and miscalls and misspells our terms and names, is regarded with little respect. Real knowledge must be had. No man can sustain any character as a physician or any rank in the medical world, who deems it drudgery to learn the elements of our science, or thinks that any thing like dulness belongs to anatomy, physiology, or materia

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SCIENCE AND EXPERIENCE.

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medica. He must make up his mind to be a small affair in the public estimation at the outset, and still smaller in his own.

Why is it necessary to become scientific? I knew no other path to true success in the profession, but through this means. I have always thought that that man lacked some very necessary element in his character, who did not feel that he ought to excel in every thing he undertakes. How many are satisfied to be at mediocrity and even less in every branch of industry and in the arts—who can never summon energy and perseverance enough to do every thing in the best possible manner, but are satisfied, if they only get off their duties in a very indifferent way;-thus proclaiming to the world the whole secret of their want of success, when perhaps they do not know it themselves.

The man, who excels in any trade or in any department of industry, always commands employment at the highest prices; and all this, because he has endeavoured to do every thing in the most perfect manner. It is not because he is the most lucky man, that an operative in one of our woolen mills can command three dollars per day, while another,

equal physical strength, and who works as hard, can scarcely get one, nor is it any mark of favour on the part of his employers, he is without doubt the cheaper man of the two. With an income ($3 per day) equal to that of some of our very best clergymen, and much superior to the support of the learned professions in general, does an operative by his skill in a low art, irrespective of mental cultivation or elevation, command such a price and make it felt that he is a cheap inan at that. All this is, because he has brought all the science of his art to his aid, he has made his manual efforts, the result of an in. vestigating persevering and earnest mind. He has resolved never to be a mere "drawer of water or hewer of wood" but an enlightened and scientific operative, surely one of the noblest specimens of humani. ty in the mechanical arts in our country.

If then in the arts, a man by his superior skill and training is always successful, how much more shall science, and professional dicipline have to do with the success of every physician. The same general principle runs through all, viz: that excellence of any kind will sooner or later command its just reward.

The question returns again, why is it necessary to be scientific? I have spoken of it as an element of success. It seems to me that no man, at the present time with any aspirations for the future could be content to be half trained, half disciplined or half educated, would