at and between the several stations we take, that it goes on as unremittingly there, as if we were at the seat of government.  I pass more hours in public business at Monticello than I do here, every day; and it is much more laborious, because all must be done in writing.  Our stations being known, all communications come to them regularly, as to fixed points.  It would be very different were we always on the road, or placed in the noisy and crowded taverns where courts are held.  Mr. Rodney is expected here every hour, having been kept away by a sick child.  I salute you with friendship and respect.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER LV.—­TO DOCTOR WISTAR, June 21, 1807

TO DOCTOR WISTAR.

Washington, June 21, 1807.

Dear Sir,

I have a grandson, the son of Mr. Randolph, now about fifteen years of age, in whose education I take a lively interest.

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I am not a friend to placing young men in populous cities, because they acquire there habits and partialities which do not contribute to the happiness of their after life.  But there are particular branches of science, which are not so advantageously taught any where else in the United States as in Philadelphia.  The garden at the Woodlands for Botany, Mr. Peale’s Museum for Natural History, your Medical School for Anatomy, and the able professors in all of them, give advantages not to be found elsewhere.  We propose, therefore, to send him to Philadelphia 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.

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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,