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SECTION II. On the General Principles of Truth and Error in the Cultivation of Medicine.—Enumeration of the Sources of Error. The Author has endeavoured in the preceding Section to enumerate and define the primary elements, or ultimate facts, which belong exclusively to animated nature, and are as it were the alphabet of physiology. In an attempt which is new, on a subject of which he has taken a view peculiar to himself, he does not dare to think that he has attained any thing like perfection. It is evident, however, that it is only by following out an analytical scheme of this kind,that a foundation can be laid for the genuine principles of theoretical medicine ; for the elements of disease can only be expounded by a thorough knowledge of the elements of life and health. But it is not his intention now to apply it synthetically by building upon it a formal system of nosology, physiology, or pathology; far less to bewilder himself, or his reader, by agitating the mechanical question, whether life consists in the play of these principles, or whether it is something superinduced on them. His main object in this analysis, is to convey an adequate conception of the great difficulties which those have to encounter, who would found practical medicine on a knowledge of the animal economy, and to bespeak a liberal indulgence for the errors of those, who, in attempting this, have had to grope and wander in more dark and intricate mazes, than what has fallen to the lot of any other class ofinquirers into the various departments of nature. We have seen that the animal nature of man, besides being subject to the mechanical laws of inanimate matter, andto the influence of the passions, consists of a number of principles, which must all act in harmony in a state of health, and that the ...