A Treatise on the Eclectic Southern Practice of Medicine Page: 149 of 724

                                
CONGESTIVE FEVER.

sented as infallible remedies, without reference to the
nature of the disease in the lungs, by which the cough
is produced. But the diseases of the lungs are of vari-
ous kinds-requiring different modes of treatment-and
what may cure one patient will destroy another. If a
clergyman, then, has seen a quack medicine relieve one
individual, he certainly is not justified in generalizing
and commending it to all who may, from the coinci-
dence of a single symptom, fancy themselves in the same
condition.
Medicine is an inductive science, the basis of which
is a knowledge of the structure and functions of the
human body. How many of our clergymen under-
stand anatomy and physiology, beyond Dr. Paley's
Natural Theology ?  We suspect very few. We would
ask these respected brethren what they mean by ortho-
doxy?   Is it not a full acquaintance with the letter and
spirit of the Bible, and a faithful adherence to both ?
Now medicine, if I may make a comparison, has its
orthodoxy, which consists in a profound knowledge of
the principles of the science, and a reliance on them to
guide us in practice, as the divine relies on the doctrines
of the Bible to guide and -govern him in preaching. If
some ignorant layman, but superficially acquainted with
that divine revelation, and unimbued with its spirit,
were to advertise a new exposition of its doctrines-a
sort of patent mode of securing Heaven-what would our
clerical friends say, if physicians, who had never made
the Bible a study, were to certify to the truth and effi-
cacy of such a pretended discovery? They would
undoubtedly warn the people to beware. It would be a
dereliction of duty for them to remain silent; and we,
on the other hand, feel, that duty in reference to the

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