the clay apparently before it was baked." Gerhard distinguishes three classes of these vases-1. Those purely Greek. 2. Those also Greek, but modified as if by Greek residents in Etruria. 3. Those of Etruscan manufacture in imitation of Greek. That Greek artists were settled in Etruria is evident from the legend of Eucheir and Eugrammos accompanying Demaratus. Besides the classes above enumerated, some are purely Etruscan, having both Etruscan subjects and Etruscan inscriptions. For a knowledge of the Etruscan mythology, one of the most interesting class of relics consists of the bronze specchi or mirrors, on the inside of which such subjects are frequently delineated.

Though so much has been done in the way of bringing to light the extant monuments of Etruscan civilization, Etruria, like many other parts of Italy, is, to a large ex

tent, an unexplored country. The striking discoveries made within the last few years are sufficient to show this. If future explorations are to be conducted with success, they must be undertaken by travellers possessed of energy, scholarship, and sound sense, like those exhibited by Mr. Dennis. For what he has already done, he deserves the acknowledgments of every lover of antiquity. In closing our notice of his work, we have only to express our regret that the pictorial illustrations are so few. Why, for instance, have we no engravings of the celebrated paintings in the Tarquinian tombs ? The omission is the less excusable, as the author finds fault with Mrs. Gray for her inaccurate representation of them. By a judicious abridgment of some excrescences of style, in various passages, abundant room might be found in a subsequent edition.

WHEN we look back upon the havoc which two hundred years have made in the ranks of our immortals-and the accumulation of more good works than there is time to peruse we cannot help being dismayed at the prospect which lies before the writers of the present day. There never was an age so prolific of popular poetry as that in which we now live. The last ten years has produced, we think, an annual supply of about ten thousand lines of good staple poetry poetry from the very first hands, and as likely to be permanent as present success can make it. Now if this goes on for a hundred years longer, what a task will await the poetical readers of 1919! Our living poets will then be nearly as old as Pope and Swift are at present-and if Scott, and Byron, and Campbell have already cast Pope and Swift a good deal into the shade, in what form and dimensions are they themselves likely to be presented to the eyes of our great-grandchildren? The thought, we own, is a little appalling; and we confess

we see nothing better to imagine than that they may find a comfortable place in some new collection of specimens-the centenary of the present publication. There shall posterity still hang with rapture on the half of Campbell--and the fourth part of Byron -and the sixth of Scott-and the scattered tithes of Crabbe--and the three per cent. of Southey-while some good-natured critic shall sit in our mouldering chair, and more than half prefer them to those by whom they have been superseded! It is a hyperbole of good-nature, however, we fear, to

ascribe to them even those dimensions at the end of a century. After a lapse of two hundred and fifty years, we are afraid to think of the space they may have shrunk into. We have no Shakspeare, alas! to shed a never-setting light on his contemporaries; and if we continue to write and rhyme at the present rate for two hundred years longer, there must be some new art of short-hand reading invented-or all reading will be given up in despair.—Lord Jeffrey.

THE English public attach too much importance to the mere administration of medicine. They appear to think that for every complaint medicine is to be taken; that the chief, if not the only duty of a medical man, is to prescribe and administer drugs; and that medicine is the sole cause of every change in a disease, whether for better or worse, which follows the use of it. In all this there is much error. An illustration will at once show what is meant, and prove its truth. Take a case of indigestion. The disease may have arisen from excess or impropriety in eating or drinking, or from some other bad habit continued through ignorance, necessity, or self-indulgence. In the majority of such cases, if the cause be removed, the suffering will cease. If the medical man, however, were to content himself with pointing out the cause, and directing the patient to avoid it, and were to prescribe no medicine, such is the inveterate expectation of physic, that most patients would go away dissatisfied. Medicine is therefore given, together with directions to avoid the injurious habit; the patient recovers, and the drugs get the credit. Too often the cause is repeated, and the same process of cure is again and again submitted to. It is not to be supposed that all cases of indigestion belong to the class from which the above example is taken. There are some in which the cause may not admit of being removed; those arising from mental anxiety, for instance; others in which, owing to great debility in the stomach, the suffering is very disproportionate to the offense. In both these medicine may be legitimately and usefully employed to palliate suffering, until time can be gained for effecting a more radical cure by other means.

It is important to know that there is great power in the human body to throw off disease, and to restore health, without any help,

when the cause is temporary, and has ceased to operate. This power alone is sufficient to cure many diseases, not merely the trifling, but even in many instances the more severe ones. Suppose a cold has been taken, and the subject of it is a little feverish. In the mass of cases the patient will get well without any medical assistance. The duty of the medical man, if called in, is to find out whether there be any serious disease: if there be, he will treat it; if not, little further may be needed. He may palliate suffering, and may shorten the illness-both good things; but nature would effect a cure without him. Again, suppose a case of measles, scarlet fever, or typhus fever. The disease has arisen from a contagious poison, and it will run a certain course. Some cases are very mild. In these the medical man has little to do but to keep the patient out of harm's way, and to be ready to act if the case becomes more severe. Each of these diseases is liable to become complicated with serious internal changes, or with a dangerous failing of the strength. A case that is mild to-day may be severe to-morrow. prompt attention of a professional man in these circumstances may save life. If it were known, however, beforehand that the case would be mild, it might be safely left to nature. In the case of typhus, it will be important to find out the cause of the attack, with a view to its removal, or to the removal of other members of the family from the sphere of its influence. Suppose, lastly, a case of erysipelas. It may be the most trifling or the most serious disease imaginable. Many cases are so mild, that they might very safely be left to themselves; others are so severe, as to baffle the highest professional skill. How often do we find the cure of the trifling cases ascribed wholly to the drugs taken, whether from the hand of a regular or an irregular practitioner; whether in the

The

ordinary doses of the allopath, or in the inconceivable dilutions of the homœopath.

The habit of looking to physic for everything, and of taking it to excess, prevails much more in England than in Scotland; and the difference depends very much upon the difference in the circumstances of the medical profession in the two countries. Originally, the English apothecary was a dispenser of medicines only, and not a medical practitioner: he compounded physicians' prescriptions. About the close of the seventeenth century, the apothecaries in London and its neighborhood began generally to prescribe, as well as to dispense medicines.

The encroachment was resisted by the College of Physicians; and from a pamphlet published in 1724, defending the apothecaries, it seems that they only claimed permission to prescribe for the poor. Even so lately as 1812, the parties who were instrumental in obtaining the present Apothecaries' Act express the opinion, "that the management of the sick should be as much as possible under the superintendence of the physician." Since 1815, the course of instruction, and the examinations instituted by the Apothecaries' Company, have been gradually improved; so that the apothecary of the present day, instead of being ignorant of physic, as his prototype was, is a well-educated medical man; and, in point of attainment, may fairly rank with the surgeon.

Whilst the education of the apothecary has been thus improving, and his position changing from that of a dispenser of medicines to a medical practitioner, the mode of remunerating him has not changed correspondingly. The old apothecary appears to have been paid for his medicines only, no account being taken of his visits or advice; for it has been only very recently decided by the judges that a licentiate of the Apothecaries' Company can legally claim compensation for his visits and his time. Many are still paid almost exclusively by their charges for medicine, and nearly all look to this as the chief source of their income. A very few charge cost-price only for their drugs, deriving their gains from charges for their visits. A still smaller number of general practitioners supply no medicines, but write prescriptions, and are paid solely for their visits and time.

It is easy to see that the practitioner who is remunerated chiefly by payments for medicine, is not only subjected to the temptation, but is often really obliged to send more medicine than is needed, in order to be able to

| live. It is not meant that medicine is sent which will do harm, but patients are often called upon to swallow innocent, though not always agreeable drugs, instead of being required to pay for the really useful articlenamely, the medical man's time and skill. A community so trained of course think all this medicine useful and necessary; an irrational faith in its powers is fostered; and they would feel dissatisfied with the man who should adopt the more straightforward and honest practice of sending them no more drugs than are good for them. The evil is not confined to the public: it has been equally felt by the medical man. He has been a petty trader rather than a professional man; his self-respect has been lessened by having to supply under really false pretenses, and to charge for an article not wanted; his position in public estimation has been lowered by the gradual discovery of the real state of things; and too often an unfounded degree of confidence in drugs has been fostered in his own mind. He gives physic for the sake of the pay, until he ends by believing in its necessity. A habit of meddlesome activity is apt to be engendered, by which not a few patients are made worse instead of better. His practice also suffers; for the public, finding themselves dosed with unnecessary drugs, often run into the opposite extreme; and losing all confidence in them, and in regular practitioners, fly to hydropathy, homoeopathy, and other forms of error or imposture.

In Scotland a different state of things has prevailed. There they have druggists, surgeons, and physicians, but no apothecaries. The surgeons sometimes supply their own medicines, charging a low price for them, but more frequently they only prescribe. The duties of the general practitioner' are performed by surgeons, often by physicians, who in that case charge only a small fee; and very commonly by gentlemen possessing at the same time a surgeon's diploma and a physician's degree. Most of the leading physicians in Scotland are "family physicians' in a great number of families-that is to say, they are the only medical attendants. At the same time, being the most eminent men of their body, they are applied to as "consulting practitioners" in cases of greater difficulty or danger. The physician in Scotland retains the place which he has always held, whereas in England he has been almost superseded as a "family physician" by the advancement of the apothecary, and he is too often regarded as a consulting practitioner

only. It will be at once seen that the temptation to give unnecessary quantities of medicine has been much less in Scotland than in England, and that this fact will explain the corresponding difference in the habits of the profession and of the public in the two countries.

The remedy for these evils is simple. Let the public be made to understand that the money which they pay to a medical man ought to be given chiefly for his time and skill, rather than for drugs. Except in remote country districts, it would probably be an advantage if medical men kept no drugs, but only wrote prescriptions. This would remove every temptation to the evils which have been described, and would also render the professional intercourse of the consulting and general practitioner more satisfactory. When two medical men agree upon a plan of treatment, it ought not to be in the power of one of the two to yield to the temptation, which may be presented in various ways, to adopt a different practice from that which has been settled between them.

Whilst the evils adverted to admit of remedy, there is another class of evils far less remediable, not arising from the abuse of medicines, but still connected with the relationship between medical men and the public.

It is very much to be regretted that even the most intelligent portion of the community have not, and perhaps never can be expected to have, the knowledge of physic required to enable them to compare justly the merits of one medical man with another, or of medical men with quacks. It is the right of each person to choose among a number of practitioners, regular and irregular, the one that he will employ, and to choose among rival systems that by which he will be treated. Yet nothing is more certain than that few persons are qualified to choose well. Their selection, even if it happen to be a wise one, is more likely to be determined by bad than by good reasons. There is much truth, as well as some exaggeration, in Dr. Johnson's remark, that "a physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his degree of reputation is for the most part totally casual; they that employ him know not his excellence; they that reject him know not his deficience." This is a very discouraging circumstance in the life of a scientific physician, as compared with that of a member of either of the other learned professions. One or two illustrations, taken from actual observation, will show the kind of difficulties which the public encounter,

and by which they are liable to be misled.

The cure of a patient is accounted, and, with due precautions, ought to be accounted, a proof of skill. But the recovery of a patient is not always a proof of skill, nor even of the absence of ignorance on the part of the practitioner; for to keep a patient from immediate death is only one part of a medical man's duty. Take, as an example, rheumatic fever. The patient's suffering is excruciating, yet he seldom dies during the attack. Suppose two similar cases, treated by two different medical men, or one by a regular, and one by an irregular practitioner. Both patients will probably escape death, and both the practitioners will therefore probably be accounted skillful. But on further inquiry, it may be found that one case lasted four or five days only, the other twenty or thirty. Is it nothing to have saved a patient several weeks of agony? Both, however, at last resume their duties. It may then be found that the one can do anything that he was able to do before his illness, and with the same comfort; whilst the other begins to suffer, sooner or later, from symptoms which turn out to have their origin in disease of the heart, left by the rheumatism. Both these cases were reputed to be "cured," but surely the cure was a very different thing in the two cases. The one patient continues well; the other is an invalid from the first, and after a few years, dies of dropsy: yet the public know no difference.

The disease to be treated may be an incurable one. Patients or their friends are too ready to think that it does not matter by whom an incurable disease is treated. There is the greatest difference, however, in the amount of suffering to be endured, and in the length of life in such cases, according as the treatment is judicious or otherwise. But the greatest difference between different medical men, and especially between medical men and quacks, in incurable diseases, as well as in others, is in their skill in finding out what the disease is; in other words, in what is technically termed the art of diagnosis. An ignorant medical man, conscious of his inferiority to abler ones in this branch of knowledge, often plumes himself upon being still able to treat disease as well as they can. But it is easy to show that, both in curable and incurable cases, the correct treatment must be based upon correct diagnosis; and therefore that the man who is inferior in the one art, must, in the great mass of cases, be inferior in the other also. A patient seeks