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was the straight and narrow path of orthodoxy in Medicine, and not the broad and devious road of French and German sophistry, in which he walked. Hence it was that pupils had confidence in him, and in after life now look back and respect him, and with us now condole. He drew them and keeps them by truth and right. “Recollect,” says he, to the graduating class of Jefferson College, “what I have so constantly urged respecting the rules of induction. What else than classification of phenomena is the whole science of nature? Be governed therefore by the observation of symptoms,—not by the imaginary causes of them. Follow the dictates of common sense. Be satisfied with the opinion thus formed. Reject all inquiry into the secret and undefinable causes of life and disease. You cannot imagine the advantage you will gain, by such a course, over those who are governed by the long exploded precepts of the schoolmen—revived and repolished, as it must be confessed they have been, by the innovators of France. While they are balancing doubts and difficulties, and vibrating from one conjecture to another, you will be fortified by the calm and unchangeable dictates of sound reason and philosophy.”
Such precepts were incessantly given. His instructions were not restricted to the official condition of chartered institutions. He communicated knowledge any where and every where—at the bed-side, in the office, at the corners of the streets, in the gig and by the way side. He rapidly and abundantly acquired intellectual nourishment for pupils; and with the instinctive propensity and delight of a nursing mother he pressed the hungry pupil to his heart and fed him from his truthful scientific lips. Such was the multiform character of McClellan as a Medical Instructor, making the second item of our claim.
McClellan held a third public station; which in its
