A medical philosopher, as you are good enough to call me, elaborating
theories by the aid of cases sought out by himself, and by him watched
and scrutinised with more time at command, and consequently infinitely
more minuteness than the ordinary practitioner can afford, falls
insensibly into habits of observation, which accompany him everywhere,
and are exercised, as some people would say, impertinently, upon every
subject that presents itself with the least likelihood of rewarding
inquiry.

There was a promise of this kind in the slight, timid, kindly, but
reserved gentleman, whom I met for the first time at this agreeable
little evening gathering. I observed, of course, more than I here set
down; but I reserve all that borders on the technical for a strictly
scientific paper.

I may remark, that when I here speak of medical science, I do so, as I
hope some day to see it more generally understood, in a much more
comprehensive sense than its generally material treatment would warrant.
I believe the entire natural world is but the ultimate expression of
that spiritual world from which, and in which alone, it has its life. I
believe that the essential man is a spirit, that the spirit is an
organised substance, but as different in point of material from what we
ordinarily understand by matter, as light or electricity is; that the
material body is, in the most literal sense, a vesture, and death
consequently no interruption of the living man's existence, but simply
his extrication from the natural body--a process which commences at the
moment of what we term death, and the completion of which, at furthest a
few days later, is the resurrection "in power."

The person who weighs the consequences of these positions will probably