Page:A dissertation on the puerperal fever (1789).djvu/9



T is not without diffidence that I appear before this and, in conformity to the laudable custom established in the University.

To produce a dissertation in a language I have never professedly studied, before I entered these walls, is not so easy a talk as some perhaps may imagine: but relying on that candor which distinguishes a polite education, I am emboldened to offer you this specimen of my studies, hoping that every deficiency of language will be excused.

I shall say a few words for the information of those who may wonder to see a person of my age engaging in the study of Physic. The occasion of it is this;—Canada, like most provinces at a great distance from the mother country, has become very deficient in medical knowledge. Not only the most approved English authors are unknown to most of us, but even the late French writers on physic and surgery are scarcely seen among us.

Ignorance and quackery having, from these and some other causes, spread among us, to the great detriment of the lives of his Britannic Majesty's subjects, it excited the attention of the legislature, and particularly of the humane Lord Dorchester, who, touched with a tender feeling for the sufferings of others, issued an Ordonnance, obliging