Nature, in all its operations, in all its movements, is characterized by the utmost simplicity, order and harmony. There is no confusion, no discord. Creation itself is like a mighty instrument, its parts composed of worlds and systems of worlds. Touched by the hand of God, it gives forth only notes of music and harmony.

If, with the aid of the telescope's mighty power we look upon the heavens, world on world, and system beyond system start into view, stretching far away into the depths of space, even beyond the assisted gaze of man. And yet these unnumbered worlds, to which, in point of size, our earth is but a pigmy, roll on in silent majesty from year to year, and from age to age, sweeping through the heavens on their viewless track, almost with the lightning's swiftness, crossing and recrossing on their silvery paths, without interfering one with the other, but in the utmost harmony and order. The comets wander off into unknown regions, returning at their appointed time after centuries of absence. Sweeping backward and forward through the heavens, they may rightly be called the pendulums of the universe, marking the hours of eternity. If we look at the vegetable world, at the tree, which striking its roots deep into the ground, has wrestled with a century's storms and tempests, at the ivy, which twines around its trunk, at the flowers which bloom in wild and sweet profusion over the face of nature, at the green grass which forms a yielding carpet beneath our feet, we find them all obeying fixed and positive laws. In all the combinations of matter, which are every hour going on about us, how harmonious the progress, and marriage, if I may so speak, of matter, how beautiful and grand the result!

In the vast laboratory of nature, how simple the elements we see at work, yet how stupendous and mighty the result! Each particle of matter obeys a principle it cannot transgress, and combines in beautiful proportion with the element necessary to complete the plan. Each combination in nature, each step in the mighty plan of creation, is in obedience to fixed, unalterable laws. Science is unfolding one glorious truth after another, revealing in dazzling light, the beauty, harmony and simplicity of nature, and the causes of her various phenomena. We see what causes have been at work to upheave the mountain, form the channels of rivers, dot the ocean with islands, and cover the earth with vegetation and beauty; why spring is followed by summer, and summer by winter; why to-day we feel the soft and gentle breezes of the south, and to-morrow swelter beneath the rays of a burning sun, tremble before the storm, or shiver in the cold winds from the north.

Nature works by fixed laws. There is no chance, no guess-work in her combinations and movements. Science is gradually unfolding these principles and laws, and now, guided by those laws which have been already unfolded, we daily penetrate deeper and deeper into the temple of nature, and bring to light new wonders and glories. The chemist in pursuing his labors, has fixed data to work upon, data the result of experience and close and accurate observation. At each step of his progress he feels that he is treading on firm ground, that his pathway is surrounded with light, that the science he is cultivating is a positive science, and whenever he directs his footsteps into unexplored regions of investigation he goes forth with confidence, confidence in immutable and unchangeable laws, and finds in all his researches, in all the glorious truths he brings to light from nature, no clashing with laws already known, no contradiction of the true science of the past, but a beautiful harmony reigning through all.

In what an endless labyrinth did the theories of the ancients involve them as it regards the movements of the heavenly bodies and the various phenomena of nature. Contradiction met them at every step, and they found themselves at every effort becoming more and more entangled in a net-work of mysteries. At length the philosopher detects in "attraction of cohesion and gravitation" the great levers which move worlds, and going on step by step, he discovers other truths, and finds in all, principles which are to guide him and cast light on his path in all future investigations. And now the astronomer, with his telescope, can calculate the movements of the heavenly bodies, predict with unerring certainty the return of the comet from its far off wanderings, and unroll before our eager gaze the glorious map of the starry heavens.

If we look back upon the history of medicine, what proofs do we find, until within the last half century, of its having any claim to rank among the positive sciences. We find the whole medical profession groping in fog, striving to catch shadows, and vainly searching in in the midst of bogs and quagmires for firm ground on which to stand. Now and then, as a ray of sunlight penetrates the mist by which they are surrounded, they perceive their error, and start off into another, and equally fruitless path. Thus confusion treads upon the heels of conjecture. Theory after theory is born, flourishes its brief span, and is then crowded from the stage to give place to another equally wild and fruitless. The theory of to-day is renounced to-morrow, consigned to the tomb to be exumed by some modern AEsculapius, clad in new garments, and proclaimed to the world with a flourish of trumpets as his own offspring. Time and space would fail us, and indeed it would be a useless task to attempt a description of the theories of disease, and its treatment, which have been advanced by the medical philosophers of the world from the days of Hippocrates to the present. Let us briefly glance at the treatment the patient receives at the hands of the so-called, old or allopathic school of medicine, with its boasted antiquity, and its experience of thousands of years.

Floating about on the wild sea of conjecture, without any leading principle to guide to the appropriate remedy, the treatment of disease is as various as the almost innumerable theories, which have been advanced.