remarked, that "there are three things which almost every person gives himself credit for understanding, whether he has taken any pains to make himself master of them or not, These are: 1. The art of mending a dull fire: 2. Politics: and 3. PHYSIC." And this is especially true of the last of these. Both the well informed and the ignorant seem to think, that they are perfectly competent to decide whether a physician is treating a case properly; and watch the effect of remedies in order to do this, and hesitate not to express their opinions on this point in the most positive manner. So common and inveterate is this habit in the community, that it will be difficult to eradicate it. And yet I think it can in some good degree be done. Intelligent men can be made to see, by a candid exposition of the peculiar liability there is in medical experience to mistake in regard to the relation between cause and effect, that it requires an extensive knowledge of medicine to make accurate observations of the influence of remedies; and that therefore one who has never studied this science, and who has had but limited means of observation, must be but a poor critic on the practice of physicians. They can see that, though such an one may cope with others in the art of mending a dull fire, or on the subject of politics, yet on so abstruse a subject as medicine is, he ought to be somewhat modest in his opinions, and not put them forth, as is now so often done, with all the authority of an oracle.

Why then, let me ask, have not intelligent men been made to look upon this subject in this light? This question I will endeavor to answer.

There is, in the first place, a large class in the medical profession, who desire no change in the views of the community, but prefer to maintain their present false position. Their success, like that of the quack, actually depends on

practising upon the credulity of the public. They would dread being scrutinized in the way which I have pointed out, by tests which the observer himself understands. They would prefer that people should continue to judge of them as they have done, by tests of which they are ignorant, because they can in this way continue to deceive them. The number of such men in our profession, I am sorry to say, is very large; and many of them have an extensive practice, and stand high in the public favor, and for this reason are quite indifferent both to their own standing with their brethren, and to the general standing of the profession itself. Though they do nothing perhaps which is sufficient to endanger their loss of caste among physicians, their influence is detrimental to the interests of the profession, and favors in the worst possible way the hold of quackery upon the community.

There is another large class of medical men, who really desire to be honorable in their course, but who have felt themselves obliged to use to some extent the same arts with which the dishonorable impose upon their patients. They feel that they cannot reform public sentiment, but must take it as it is, and do the best they can with it. They find whims and caprices and false ideas among the intelligent, as well as the ignorant; and instead of taking any pains to correct the evil, they succumb to it, and set themselves to work to make capital out of it. They thus place themselves on common ground with the quack and the pretender, and subject themselves to be estimated by the same false rules which are applied to them. They thus have almost insensibly contracted habits of low cunning and shallow pretension; and these are habits which are not easily given up. Of course this class of medical men will be inclined to look with distrust upon any efforts to reform

the profession, and the public, in the particulars to which I have alluded; and, though they may not actually oppose such efforts, or may from selfish motives even make a show of favoring them in certain quarters, they cannot be expected to give them any active support.

There is, however, one result of the course which this class of medical men have pursued, which seems to be opening the eyes of the most honorable among them, and which promises to bring them out from their false and degrading position. They find that their cunning subservience to the false opinions of the people, has increased the hold of those opinions upon the public mind; and, as a wide door has thus been opened for quackery, they find that the same arts, in using which they have been so successful, are now used quite as dexterously by the whole herd of ignorant quacks and showy pretenders. They find that the Homœ pathist is stealing away some of their best, and, as they thought, their most reliable patients. The Thompsonian, the Chronothermalist, &c., are committing similar depredations. And of all this they have no right to complain, because these pretenders obtain these patients by the same artful and deceptive means, by which these physicians at first acquired them, and by which they have so long retained them among their patrons.

The result which I have pointed out is an accumulated result. The community are running wild now after various systems and modes of practice, and the public mind is all afloat, carried about by every wind of doctrine in medicine. It is now the hey-dey of quackery of all kinds and degrees. The causes of the great prevalence of this evil are not temporary and recent, but they have been acting for a long time, and we now see the accumulated result. Among the chief of these causes is the course which has

been pursued by a large portion of the medical profession. The profession itself has given birth to much of the quackery of the present day.

The evil of this comes upon the profession generally, but more particularly and grievously upon the class of physicians of which I have just been speaking. The first class which I mentioned are not as much affected, because, being less scrupulous, they have a wider range of arts to be used; and the mortifications to which they are subjected in their competition with quacks are more easily borne, because they have less of honor and conscience to trouble them in relation to their course. While this class will be utterly opposed to any attempts at reform, the second class of which I have spoken, seeing their false position, and beginning to suffer some of its vexatious results, will probably experience a sifting process, whenever efforts at reform shall be thoroughly entered upon. The least honorable, and those whose habits of imposition (for such they must be termed), have become fixed, will join the first class, giving up all scruple, and adopting in full the measures of the quack and charlatan. But I am persuaded, that the largest portion of this class of practitioners have so much of honor and conscience, that, whenever a general effort shall be made to redeem the profession from its false position before the community, they will be ready to unite in that effort.

But this effort is not to begin in this class. There is still another class of physicians who are to originate it. They are the men in our profession who have always pursued an honorable course, and have never yielded to the temptations to use the arts of empiricism, however strong they may have been-who, though they have often seen their brethren use such arts successfully in their competition with them without injuring their standing in the com

munity, have never allowed such mortifications to induce them to swerve from the path of honor and duty, Efforts, it is true, have been made by such physicians to enlighten the public mind in relation to its false estimates of professional merit; but they have been for the most part isolated and individual efforts, and they have soon been given up for reasons to which I have before alluded. A general and united effort is needed, and I have no doubt that it would be successful.