true value and to tliul a tittino- employment I'or the knowledge thus brouirht to liMit. The vounircr men amongst us are naturally attracted both to fresh research, and the ajiplication of its fruits in clinical work. The elders, by their longer experience of humanity, both in its wellbeing and its woes, are less eager to engage in experimental methods, and prefer to jn-actise the hard-earned principles which have gi'adually commended themselves to them.* Do what we will, however, truths either new or in fresh aspects move steadily onwards, and come in the fulness of time to occupy the field.
For our purposes as Physicians, the secrets of Nature disclosed in the Laboratory require to be brought to the touchstone of clinical experiment and observation. If they be veritable facts, they serve at once to advance our Art by enlarging our powers to cope with diseased conditions ; while, if the results of Laboratory experiments have been incompletely wrested from Nature they will fail to aid us, though, perchance, they may prove suggestive. Of some, I think, it may be said that they fail primo
• "No man who bad attained to the age of forty years was found to adopt Harvey's doctrine of the circulation : it had to win its way under the safeguard ... of the youthful and unprejudiced spirits of the age." — Life of Harvey, p. xlvii. R. Willis.
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