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Show TO THE READER, L'Lmr of the members of our profession are accustom. ed to draw a distinction betwixt the knowledge obtained in classes or dissecting-rooms, and that practical knowledge which they have gained by experience; and they seem will- ing to extend this distinction in favour of themselves, by v mum. M maintaining the superiority of practice over theory. There may be a defective system of education nhich gives too much importance to theory, but certainly the ignorance of what has been done by men of the first genius in this way, does not make the surgeon more an observer or a disci- ple of nature. Ignorance or weakness is as prone to theory as to superstition, and it requires a mind of a higher cast, strengthened by education, to subdue the natural inclination to generalize on a few limited facts. In conversing with medical men, the most remote from the Universities and practical schools of anatomy and surgery, I have found them indulging in the most fanciful and wild theories. No one ought to be more ready than myself to acknowledge the benefit he has derived from the conversation of practical men; at all times impressed with the im- portancc of their information, I have cultivated their acquaintance with a view to improvement; but even these very men, whose chief value consists in the number of facts which they can attest from their actual observation, have always ready a theoretical interpretation which obscures the |