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..
THE 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
