I beg leave to dedicate to you this edition of Dr. Cullen's textbooks on Physiology, Nosology, and the Practice of Physic. In preparing it for the press, I have had two objects chiefly in view; first, to furnish you with such extracts from Dr. Cullen's MS. papers, as seem to throw additional light on the subjects of which these books treat; and, secondly, to put the public in possession of documents that appear to me to establish Dr. Cullen's claims to originality for observations and doctrines, which, under various modifications, have been repeatedly brought forward since his time, and made the bases of new theories or systems of Medicine.

The Outlines of the Physiology have been prefixed to this edition, and illustrated in some parts with Dr. Cullen's own commentaries, in the belief that they are less generally known than his other writings, and that a knowledge of the view which they exhibit of the Nervous system, is necessary to a proper understanding of some of the doctrines contained in his First Lines of the Practice of Physic.

The Synopsis Nosologiae Methodicae, has been reprinted from the edition published by Dr. Cullen in 1784, with the omission only of the abridgment which he has given of the nosological systems of his predecessors and cotemporaries.

The Lectures introductory to the Course on the Practice of Physic, now published for the first time, have been printed from copies of them corrected in Dr. Cullen's handwriting. To these Lectures I have restored a portion of the History of Medicine, which Dr. Cullen had transferred to his preface to the First Lines.

Besides numerous additions made to the First Lines of the Practice of Physic, from Dr. Cullen's MS. Lectures, I have introduced various passages from the Treatise of the Materia Medica, published by him in two volumes quarto in 1789.