Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/53



ON THE OBJECTS AND MODES

OF

MEDICAL INVESTIGATION.

BY EDWARD BARLOW, M. D.

Physician to the Bath United Hospital, and to the Bath Hospital, &c..

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HE objects of the provincial medical and surgical association are fully and clearly stated in the excellent address, which Dr. Hastings, its Founder, delivered at the inauguratory meeting, and which forms the appropriate introduction to this, its first volume of transactions. In order to promote the fulfilment of these purposes, it may not be inexpedient, at the outset of an undertaking so comprehensive in its designs, and which promises to elicit much valuable knowledge from a class of practitioners eminently qualified for affording useful instruction, to discuss briefly the objects and modes of investigation, by which pathological truths can be best established, and sound science most successfully cultivated.

While the association embraces in its designs the whole range of medical science, it is to the improvement and diffusion of practical knowledge its efforts will be more especially directed, this being the great end for which the science exists. Of this knowledge facts are the basis, and speculation is of value only