in India the raw material is to be found from which all these valuable remedies, from the use of which your countrymen are now debarred, can be prepared. But you must be practical chemists to accomplish this national object, mere book chemistry will not do. In proof of this I need not adduce more than one solitary fact. The substance called soormah or sulphuret of antimony, which is cheap and abundant in every bazar, is the source from which all the invaluable preparations of antimony, for instance tartar emetic, are prepared. Now, on referring to Dr Ainslie's work on Indian materia medica, you will find that author asserting that what is sold for soormah is always sulphuret of lead not of antimony. The practical chemist alone could decide this question, and on analyzing the soormah of the bazar, I found not only real sulphuret of antimony but the best and purest I ever met.

Again there are many valuable medicines, such as Peruvian bark, composed of a small quantity of an active remedial principle, mixed up with much useless or even prejudicial matter. From this bark the chemist has extracted quinine, by which we now can master most of the fevers of this country, rendering it to the wealthy and the great, practically on a par in salubrity with many more favored climates. But this Peruvian bark and quinine and other similar valuable remedies are only obtainable from Europe or other countries at an expense which renders them unattainable by the poor inhabitants of this country. But I have too firm a faith in the providence of nature not to believe that she has been as bountiful to India as to Peru. Though our jungles and forests exhale miasmata they are doubtless productive of febrifuge vegetables too. I look with confidence to the indigenous materia medica for a substitute even for the inestimable quinine. The enquiry is already proceeding under the most favorable circumstances, and ere long I trust the discovery will be established which would be fraught with inappreciable good to millions of our poor Indian fellow subjects. This once accomplished, we will in India, if a class of native practical chemists be brought into existence, be almost independent of any other country. I have taken the trouble of counting the number of medicines now imported from Europe. They amount to several hundreds, all of which, except about 80, may be prepared or grown in this country. For these 80 many efficient substitutes exist in known indigenous productions.

It is almost unnecessary for me to pursue any further the uses of chemistry to the medical student. I will only allude to one topic more. There are numerous and very powerful poisons, rapidly proving fatal when taken in a certain quantity. I may mention prussic acid, barytes, oxalic acid, corrossive sublimate, caustic potash, oil of vitriol, &c. as instances; these and many others chemistry renders perfectly harmless by pointing out antidotes, which if administered in proper time, are the certain means of saving life. To chemistry again we turn in cases of murder by poisoning, to enable us to detect the substance used, and bring the murderer to justice. The nicety with which in many cases this science enables us to accomplish this important end will be judged of when I tell you that a very little practice in the laboratory will enable you to detect the 100th part of a grain of arsenic, corrosive sublimate, &c. in any mixture that can be presented to you. And perhaps it will be equally pleasing to you to know that this science will very often enable you to protect persons labouring under false accusations.

I shall now conclude by giving a summary account of the mode in which the classes shall be conducted.

I propose in the first place to bring the pupils through the list of simple substances before you and their compounds, minutely investigating their properties as we proceed. The history of chemistry, one of the the most pleasing departments of my duties, I will

take up seriatim as I examine each simple substance. Thus, when we come to the metals, their history will bring us back to the days of Geber and the alchemists, to their dreams on transmutation and on the philosopher's stone. When the air is to be described the labors of Priestly, Cavendish, and Lavoisier will find their most appropriate, because most intelligible, record. Having gone through the simple substances, I shall shew how they are affected by heat and light, and in this department the steam engine, and subsequently the recent magnificent discoveries in electricity and magnetism will be fully considered. In this system I may add, I imitate with slight modifications the plan pursued in the Schools of Chemistry of the Universities of Edinburgh and London. I say with slight modifications, for I am aware that it is usual in most schools to commence with heat and light, and thence to proceed at once to electricity and magnetism, and last of all, to the simple substances. The plan seems to me open to so many objectious, that I have decided on adopting the different course I have described. From the difficulties I myself encountered while a student in comprehending the laws of heat before I was taught the properties of the substances on which the operation of these laws was pointed out, I cannot but be convinced of the advantages of the method I now propose. How, for instance, can the specific heat of the gases, an important and most useful but most elaborate subject, be possibly studied with advantage by those who are ignorant of the other physical and chemical properties of the gases in question. On this point I appeal with confidence to more than one of the eminent scientific gentlemen now present. Again, as to heat, the recent researches of Nobili and Melloni on radiant heat would alike defy the intelligence of any student who did not possess extensive and accurate knowledge of the chemistry of the simple substances; in proof of this I may mention that the new and beautiful results they have obtained, can only be demonstrated by an instrument called the thermo-multiplier, they have constructed, and which is now preparing in this laboratory, so delicate in its indications that the heat of a common fly or of a budding flower, even of the moon's rays, is distinctly shewn by it. It would be idle, I repeat, to attempt to teach my pupils the use of this instrument at the commencement of the course, and it would be equally idle to attempt to teach the laws of heat without its assistance. These remarks coterie paribus applyed to galvanism and electricity, also sciences which Faraday has within the last few completely months revolutionized. It would be equivalent to the teaching of the Ptolemeian instead of the Copernican astronomy, if I were to follow in this school any doctrines but those which Faraday has established, and which will mark this century with distinction in all future scientific chronicles. I might as well give lectures on astronomy to men destitute of all knowledge of the rudiments of mathematics as persevere in the usual routine of the schools, as to the order of the lectures on galvanism and electricity.

Lastly, on the alternate days whenever the subject admits of it, the medical pupils will be instructed in the laboratory in the practical details of chemistry, especially in the making of medical preparations and testing of poisons and analysis of ores and minerals. In this section I shall follow the system adopted in the Ecole Pra que of Paris, the beneficial workings of which I have myself witnessed. These courses will occupy about five months, and next year will, I trust, be followed by one for general students and tradesmen exclusively on the chemistry of the arts, and in which they have the benefit of visiting the many manufactories about Calcutta ; and another for the most distinguished of the medical pupils on the minute details of analysis on the peculiar plan followed by Rose, the professor of chemistry at Berlin.

The only serious difficulty I anticipate in carrying these designs is in the impossibility of providing all the pupils with the admirable class books of Europe. The only remedy I can devise for this deficiency, is the publication next year of the notes of my lectures

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in the form of a Manual. This will be of use to the elementary students, while those who distinguish themselves shall not want books to promote their exertions. Of course the success of the plan depends chiefly on the zeal and capacity of the pupils. Of their capacity no one who looks at their foreheads can doubt for a moment; of their zeal, too, I have had already ample proof, and why should they not be zealous. They have every inducement before them to make them enthusiastic. Emolument, honor, and distinction must rouse them from the apathy alleged to be their national curse. In fine, I would bid them to look forward with the feelings of patriotic men to the benefits they can thus spread among their fellow subjects. Every pupil we teach here may go forth in his turn and teach a hundred more, thus scattering in every direction the seeds of useful knowledge we now are implanting, among themselves. They will thus become the true reformers of their æra, and though some among them may not live to see the gathering in of the harvest they have sown, their memory will at least be honored as the first who guided the plough over a field which for ages had been a fruitless, because an uncultivated, waste.

I feel it necessary to correct a misapprehension relative to the publicity of these lectures. They cannot be called strictly public. In the first place I am not aware how far that might be sanctioned by the Principal of the College or the Committee of Public Instruction. The lectures, moreover, will scarcely be of the description calculated for a general audience, being solely intended for the elementary instruction of the Hindu College and Medical pupils. Next cold season I hope to give a course of popular lectures in Calcutta. Meanwhile any gentlemen who may feel interested in our progress, and satisfied with mere rudimental instruction, are of course perfectly welcome to attend.

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE, MAY 3, 1836.

BY H. H. GOODEVE, ESQ.

We are now about to commence upon another and a very different branch of study from that to which you have hitherto devoted your attention.

A large portion of the foundation of your future medical knowledge has, I trust, been securely laid by the attention you have paid to the Science of Anatomy and her twin-sister Physiology. You are now ready to apply with advantage the information you have already acquired, and to prosecute with profit the more practical part of your profession. Without that previous knowledge you would have labored in vain. As you have already been frequently told, you can know nothing of the nature of disease until you have made yourselves masters of the structure and uses of the parts which are the subject of that disease. I need not, on this occasion, therefore, enlarge upon the important character of the studies in which you have heretofore been engaged, and their intimate connexion with those to which you are about to devote your attention. Their value must be self-evident even to the tyro, how much more is it then to you who have already made so much progress in your studies-a progress, I may add without flattery, which has been made within so short a period of time, that it is equally creditable to yourselves and gratifying to your instructors. Strict, however, as the connection between healthy and morbid anatomy may be, and much as the progress you may hope to make in the latter, will depend upon your knowledge of the former, you will find that the subject of your present studies differs materially in its nature from that in which you have hitherto been engaged. In the study of anatomy you, for the most part, require the exercise of memory only; now, still retaining in your minds the knowledge you have already obtained, you must call reflection and judgment to your aid, and be assured, gentlemen, these qualities must be of no inferior character, or you will never become skilful physicians, or accomplished surgeons. In place of acquiring a long list of hard names, with an account of the relative position of arteries, nerves and muscles, you must now learn to distinguish between the various alterations in structure and functions which occur in the machine whose separate parts you have been studying, and you must seek to devise appropriate plans of treatment for the cure of these derangements.

When we consider the nature of these duties, how much depends upon your future knowledge and ability; how large a portion of happiness you may produce by the skilfulness of your treatment, or on the other hand how much misery, mental and bodily, you may inflict by the mistakes of your ignorance, you will not, I am sure, require to be told that all your energy, all your attention, must be employed to accomplish the task before you, and that the same praise-worthy diligence you have hitherto displayed, must now be exercised with renewed ardour; that your zeal must be unwearying, your labor unremitting.

To this you are more especially behoven when you consider the miserable state of the healing art amongst your countrymen. When you contemplate the frightful mischiefs of quackery, the fatal effects of ignorance daily manifested around you, you must see ample cause to strain every nerve to remove these crying evils. Remember the proud position in which you are placed. Recollect that if you avail yourselves of the opportunities now offered you, to you will belong the high honor of first introducing amongst your

brethren a radical improvement in the medical art. For, when the superiority of your knowledge over that of the common native practitioner shall become conspicuous, as needs it must be, your countrymen will gladly avail themselves of it, as the richer portion of them now do of the superior science of the European surgeons and physicians.

The hope of emulating your success will then induce others to follow your example; it will serve as an incitement to those who are now content with ignorance to make themselves masters of the same knowledge which will have rendered you so conspicuous. The trade of the quack will fail; he will be compelled to educate himself rationally and study his profession as a science, or starve; he will no longer be able to fool away men's lives with his ignorance and chicanery.

Be assured that the formation of this noble institution, (for the establishment of which we cannot be sufficiently grateful to the enlightened founders) will be a death-blow to the reign of empirecism in India; every syllable of instruction conveyed within these walls, saps the foundation of the empire of quackery which has so long triumphed in this country.

It is true, that many of the native physicians pretend to great learning, and no doubt they have spent much time and labor in pouring over the precepts of the shastras, and the aphorisms of the Arabian philosophers; but in approching the study of medicine as a science, you will find that from your own medical works of the highest repute, or from the experience even of the best informed of your practitioners, you will derive but little assistance or instruction. How can it possibly be otherwise. The medical art in India, such as it is, is founded upon no knowledge of anatony, no principles of physiology. It is utterly devoid of all pathological research-objects which must necessarily form the basis of all scientific enquiries upon the subject. On the contrary, it consists of a set of dogmas, generally as ridiculous and injurious, as they are unintelligible, stating for example that all deseases are either of a hot or cold nature, or that they are produced by humours in the brain or in the liver-opinions formed without any reference whatever to the actual condition of the organs or of their functions, either in a healthy or a diseased state. Resting upon such unsound foundations, upon such opinions, with regard to the cause and nature of diseases, how can we expect the plan of treatment to be more valuable. If possible, it is still worse, more ridiculous, and far more mischievous. The hot and cold diseases require antagonizing cold and hot remedies to counteract them, and such a collection of drugs and useless compounds as the unfortunate patients are compelled to swallow, can scarcely be conceived by one educated in a rational manner. But they are worse than useless. There are too many of them positively injurious in the highest degree-many of them so dangerous that it is horrible to reflect upon the miserable effects which are sometimes produced by them. Death itself would be a mercy in comparison with the consequences which I have sometimes seen to ensue from the administration of some of the native poisons. Amongst the rest, I may mention mercury, which in the hands of the native practitioners plays sad havoc with the miserable victims of syphilis; arsenic also and aconite under the name of bis-boorie, is used to an extent, which frequently induces the most lamentable results; for example, madness, epilepsy, and a host of others which I have not time now to allude to, but which we shall hereafter have too many opportunities to observe. When speaking of the state of native medicine in this country, there is one subject to which I cannot avoid referring: I allude to the destitute state of the sick poor. The better classes when attacked with illness can obtain some sort of assistance, and those who are rich enough can get European doctors. But, alas! the poor are for the most part totally helpless; they have no where to look for aid of any kind; they die by thousands for want of the commonest relief. It is indeed a sad stigma upon their