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relates to the health giving arts. How worthy of a Physician, a Philosopher or a Gentleman, is the knowledge of the different productions of nature taken in its full extent? I cannot too earnestly recommend this study to young men, to qualify them for every useful profession that is conversant about natural objects, and especially for the study of medicine. But it behoves me to speak more particularly of medical natural history, if I may be allowed to adopt that term in the sense I have already used it; and first of Materia Medica.
Materia Medica treats of the natural history, and medical virtues, of all those bodies which are employed in diet, or in medicine. It considers the changes they undergo when applied to the human body, either internally or externally; and the effects they produce on the system.
It is beyond contradiction an object of great importance, to both Physician and Surgeon, to be well acquainted with the Materia Medica, as it belong to this to consider the nature of aliments, the choice of medicines, and a knowledge of their action in the vessels, and how they preserve or restore health.
Physiology, Pathology, Chymistry, the Materia Medica, and indeed the several branches of medicine lend a mutual aid to one another, in a greater or less degree.
