Page:A Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America - John Morgan.djvu/89

 by numerous persons of the highest genius and learning, intent upon making the strictest search into every thing which those countries afford; whence there is less hopes or chance for the students who come after them to make new discoveries. This part of the world may be looked upon as offering the richest mines of natural knowledge yet unriffled, sufficient to gratify the laudable thirst of glory in young inquirers into nature. The discovery must greatly enrich medical science, and perpetuate the glory of the authors to latest time.

How many plants are there, natives of this soil, possessed of peculiar virtues? how many fossils to enrich the cabinets of the curious? how many natural substances, objects of new trade and commerce to supply materials for various arts, as well as to enlarge the bounds of MedicinceMedicine [sic]? what means are so likely to bring them to our knowledge as medical researches and careful experiments, prosecuted by those instructed how to make them, and how to profit themselves of the discovery? A spirit of inquiry into these things would be put on foot as the natural tendency of such an institution, and prove the most likely means of bringing to light the knowledge of many useful things, of which we yet remain ignorant, the more readily, as natural history is one of the most essential studies to prepare a person