to attend the schools of Botany, Natural History, Anatomy, and perhaps
Surgery; but not of Medicine. And why not of Medicine, you will ask?
Being led to the subject, I will avail myself of the occasion to express
my opinions on that science, and the extent of my medical creed. But, to
finish first with respect to my grandson, I will state the favor I ask
of you, and which is the object of this letter.

*****

This subject dismissed, I may now take up that which it led to, and
further tax your patience with unlearned views of medicine; which, as in
most cases, are, perhaps, the more confident in proportion as they are
less enlightened.

We know, from what we see and feel, that the animal body is in its
organs and functions subject to derangement, inducing pain, and
tending to its destruction. In this disordered state, we observe nature
providing for the re-establishment of order, by exciting some salutary
evacuation of the morbific matter, or by some other operation which
escapes our imperfect senses and researches. She brings on a crisis, by
stools, vomiting, sweat, urine, expectoration, bleeding, &c, which, for
the most part, ends in the restoration of healthy action. Experience has
taught us also, that there are certain substances, by which, applied to
the living body, internally or externally, we can at will produce these
same evacuations, and thus do, in a short time, what nature would do but
slowly, and do effectually, what perhaps she would not have strength
to accomplish. Where, then, we have seen a disease, characterized
by specific signs or phenomena, and relieved by a certain natural
evacuation or process, whenever that disease recurs under the same
appearances, we may reasonably count on producing a solution of it, by