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often put the quack of a day on a level with the accredited Physician, laden with the carefully-gathered experience of years, or, perhaps, even above him; and welcome with open arms the advocate of some new system, for the moment in high favour, with scarcely any regard to the inquiry, whether he has been educated in a proper manner for the responsible post into which he has thrust himself. Many a man of fair address and a good show of cunning, with but a smattering of medical knowledge, has dubbed himself a Physician, and adopting Homœopathy, Hydropathy, or some other system just then in fashion, has imposed not only upon the ignorant, but even the intelligent and learned.

This ought not to be the case. The public should, one and all, feel that they are personally interested in upholding a well-educated medical profession. Here is a science which is confessedly difficult above all others, and in which, as we have seen, careless observation is peculiarly liable to error. How important then that those who take charge of your health, your life, should be careful and skilful observers. Education is obviously as much needed to form good habits of observation in this, as it is in other sciences. But whenever you give countenance to quackery, whether it be in the shape of a secret nostrum or a fashionable system, you strike a blow at the standard of medical education; in effect, you say to the Physician, observe, watch, study, as much as you will, we esteem all your labour and experience vain. When men of

wisdom and influence do thus, as they often do, it certainly casts contempt upon education, and therefore tends to lower its standard in the profession. For, if Physicians see that they can acquire the esteem of the public without study and labour, many will be disposed to give them up, and take the easier path to success, into which they are thus invited.

The sensible and influential in the community can render effectual aid in the overthrow of quackery, by promoting the observance of the rules of medical intercourse. These rules are not sufficiently understood and appreciated by the public. If they were, those who have influence in society would frown down the base acts of a cunning competition, and would give no countenance to the false issues upon which empirics so much depend for their success.

CHAPTER V.

GOOD AND BAD PRACTICE.

ONE would suppose that the difference between good and bad practice in medicine would be palpable to the most common and superficial observation. But it is evidently not so. Facts in great abundance show that it is far otherwise. The history both of medicine and of quackery furnishes many instructive lessons on this subject. If we confine our view to the medical profession, we often see two directly opposite modes of practice praised by their adherents, as being successful in the same complaint. We see the profession and the community both divided on this point, each party asserting with zeal the claim of its favourite system of practice to pre-eminence. Now if it were easy, by looking at results, to decide in all cases what is good and what is bad practice, it it evident the opposite modes of treament could not be in vogue at the same

time. The proper distinction would be made, and the good practice would be approved, both by the profession and the public, while that which was seen to be injurious would at once be neglected.

So also, if it were easy to make this distinction, the skilful Physician could always be recognized as such, while the unskilful and ignorant practitioner would not be able, as he now often is, to obtain from the public, in spite of his deficiencies and blunders, the meed of praise due to real merit and actual success. The quack, too, would stand forth in his true light, in contrast with the man of science in the results of his practice, instead of claiming and receiving from the multitude, as he often does, the credit of being pre-eminently successful. If it were true, that some one system of remedies and doctrines is wholly good, while all others are bad, it would be very easy for the community to decide between what is good and what is bad practice in medicine. It would only have to watch, and whatever it saw uniformly doing harm, reject, and whatever it saw uniformly doing good, retain. But the subject is not thus simple. There are some good points in every system of practice. However bad it may be on the whole, it will do some good in some cases. By bad practice is meant simply that which is inappropriate to the particular case under treatment. It is obvious that a correct decision upon this point, made from observation of results, is arrived at with much more difficulty than it would be, if what is good

in practice were wholly and always good, and what is bad were wholly and always bad.

The cases in which the difference in results between good and bad practice is immediate and palpable, are few, in comparison with the whole number of cases which come under treatment. It is in these few cases only that it is of present vital importance to pursue exactly the right course. And if the community could select these from the whole mass of cases, separating them both from those which are mild, and from those which were originally mild but have been made severe by injudicious treatment, and then should make these cases the basis of an estimate of the comparative success of different modes of practice, it might arrive at a just conclusion. The really skilful would like to be put to such a test, in comparing him with the ignorant and unskilful; for it is in such cases that quackery and unskilfulness most signally fail, and it is only by escaping this test that they escape the disgrace which is their due.

The failure just spoken of, though not generally obvious to the common observer, does sometimes open the eyes of those who have relied upon their own judgment in medicine, or upon the plausible pretensions of quackery. Unfortunately, such persons commonly have to regret that their eyes are open too late. For example, a family may go on for some time, even for years, without asking the services of a Physician; and though they have sickness occasionally, they get

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