further, that the interest upon the money is above sixty dollars a-year.

And this is called reasoning with a child! Out upon such modern tacticians! A knowledge of human nature is their motto and gathering cry; their condemnation may be summed up in their utter absence of this knowledge, in the unpardonable ignorance with which they mistake, and insult, underrate, or overtask the mind they profess to understand. Education is an incalculable engine-we see it in the result; but of its action we know, and ever shall know, but little. One mind is apparently made by it, another shows no sign of its influence; one opens visibly to receive it, another takes it in by unseen pores; some thrive upon it from the outset, others pause and take a Midsummer shoot. Instead, however, of these facts furnishing any arguments in favour of that clumsy fumbling for the unformed intellect-that merciless hunting down of the tender and unfledged thought, which these books inculcate and exemplify-they may be regarded as directly forbidding all vain experiment and speculation upon a subject, the end of which is so important, and the action so mysterious. There is, doubtless, an immense deal of discretionary power in all parents and preceptors, but if the steps of childhood are to be thus dodged, even when in the openest paths, if nothing is to be learnt but what they teach, nor felt but what they prescribe, how awfully is the trouble and responsibility increased! Let us, therefore, not be caught by plans which are as onerous to the parent as dangerous to the child, but be mindful to sow the seeds of learning and piety in a sound and, as far as possible, established way,—remembering that all human systems are imperfect, but those most of all which time has neither digested nor proved.

ART. III.-1. Brandy and Salt; a Remedy for various External and Internal Complaints, discovered by William Lee, Esq., &c. &c. By J. Vallance. London.

2. Organon; ou l'Art de Guérir. Traduit de l'original Alle mand du Dr. Samuel Hahnemann. Par Erneste George de Brennow. Paris. 1832.

3. Principles of Homœopathy. By P. Curie, M.D. formerly Surgeon of the Military Hospital of Paris, &c. &c. London. 1837.

4. Practice of Homœopathy. By P. Curie, M.D. London.

1838.

5. Hydropathy; or the Cold-Water Cure; as practised by Vincent

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Vincent Priessnitz, of Graefenberg, Silesia, Austria. By R. J. Claridge, Esq. London. 1842.

6. The Water Cure. A practical Treatise on the Cure of Diseases by Water, Air, Exercise, and Diet, &c. &c. By James Wilson, Physician to His Serene Highness Prince Nassau, &c. &c. London. 1842.

7. Quacks and Quackery Unmasked; or Strictures on the Medical Art as now practised by Physicians, &c.; with Hints upon a simple Method in connection with the Cold-Water Cure. By J. C. Feldmann, M.D. London. 1842.

TN Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters from Italy she thus IN describes the physician who attended her in a dangerous illness:

He will not allow his patients to have either surgeon or apothecary. He performs surgical operations with great dexterity, and whatever compounds he gives he makes in his own house, which are very few, the juice of herbs and these waters being commonly his sole prescriptions. He has very little learning, and professes to draw all his knowledge from experience, which he possesses perhaps in a greater degree than any other mortal, being the seventh doctor of his family in a direct line. His forefathers have all left journals and registers solely for the use of their posterity, none of them having ever published anything; and he has recourse on every difficult case to these manuscripts, of which the veracity at least is unquestionable.'

Here is an example of an individual who lived less than a century ago, but who belonged to the primitive order of medical practitioners, such as flourished in the early ages of society, before the healing art was taught in schools, or had begun to assume the character of a science. The family of the Asclepiades were practitioners of the same description, Hippocrates himself being described as one of them, and the seventeenth in a lineal succession from its founder Esculapius.

And we have no doubt that Lady Mary's Italian physician, as well as his predecessors of ancient times, had accumulated a considerable store of important practical knowledge, derived from the only true source of all knowledge-observation and experience; and beyond all comparison more useful to the world than the speculative doctrines which were promulgated by some distinguished professors on the first establishment of medical schools. It was about the time of Lady Mary's illness that the celebrated John Brown began to direct his attention to the study of medicine. The Brunonian theory, and the name of its founder, have been celebrated over the whole of Europe, while the reputation of the humble Italian never extended beyond the limits of the narrow district in which he practised,

practised, and has probably even there long since perished; but we suspect that the patients of the former must have had a poor chance of recovery compared with those who shared the attentions of the latter.

We are not, however, so heterodox as to maintain that the method pursued by the Asclepiades, or by the practitioner of Lovere, is the best that can be devised for the attainment of a knowledge of medicine and surgery. We have no right to place John Brown, nor even Boerhaave or Cullen, in the same category with the best professors of modern times. Combinations of individuals, and the division of labour, are as useful in these as in other sciences, and have done for them what could never have been done by the most earnest individual exertions. A better knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and chemistry has laid the foundation of more just notions of disease; the studies pursued in the wards of our hospitals have assumed altogether a practical form; and in the application of remedies the question is no longer how far they dovetail in with a prevailing theory, but what has been actually observed to be the result where they have been administered in other cases.

Still, whatever may be the amount of actual knowledge which has been handed down to us from age to age, and however improved the method of studying may be, it is evident that the medical sciences have not yet attained, and to us it does not appear probable that they ever will attain, the same degree of perfection with some other branches of knowledge. In the living body not only is there in operation the combined influence of the mechanical and chemical laws of matter, but to these is superadded another set of laws, and another order of phenomena, namely those of vitality. Hence it is that there are few other sciences equally complicated with these; or in which it is so difficult to obtain an exact knowledge of facts, or to make extensive and well-founded generalizations. It is also evident that the art of applying these sciences to practice can never meet the demand which is made upon it, or satisfy the expectations, we will not say of society as a body, but of the individuals who compose it. It may do much, but it cannot do all that is wanted; for if it could, pain would be banished from the world, and man would be immortal. No one will hesitate to admit this as a general proposition; but that is quite a different matter from the application of it in a particular instance to our own peculiar case. The instinct of self-preservation is powerful within us, and it is from this natural and obvious cause, as well as from others to which we shall advert hereafter, that mankind have been led in all ages to look for other means of obtaining relief in illness be

sides what are afforded to them by those who have been regularly instructed as medical practitioners.

We are not to suppose that all of those whose names might be comprised in a list of medical impostors have been really dishonest. Many of them have evidently been mere enthusiasts, stimulated probably by the double motive of doing service to their fellowcreatures and gratifying their own vanity. Others have been in the no uncommon situation of inventing lies first, and believing their own inventions afterwards. We have been informed on good authority of the vender of a quack medicine who had such disinterested faith in his own remedy, that in his last illness he would have recourse to no other-and died taking it. But we fear, nevertheless, that the honest party among these pretenders is in a small minority, and that with the greater number the only object which they have had in view has been that of turning the weakness of mankind to their own advantage, laughing in secret at the individuals whom they have duped.

A well-digested history of this irregular order of medical practitioners would not be uninstructive. It would present to us a curious list of priests and nobles, philosophers, simpletons, and knaves. Even royalty itself would not be absent from it. The name of king's-evil was applied to scrofulous diseases because the kings of England and France claimed, and were supposed to possess, the power of curing it by the simple process of touching the afflicted with the hand. The hand of the seventh son of a seventh son, and also the hand of a man who had been hanged, possessed the same healing property-which last must have been a flattering association for the monarchs. In England it is said that the miracle was first wrought by Edward the Confessor; nor did the lapse of centuries impair the faith of any of the parties concerned-Charles II. having, in the course of twenty-two years, during which exact registers were kept, touched 92,107 scrofulous persons. Wiseman, who held the office of serjeant-surgeon, a man of great repute in his day, and of undoubted skill (for the folio volume on surgery which he has left behind him may be consulted with advantage even at the present time), bears the following testimony to the efficacy of his royal master's treatment :- I must needs profess that what I write' (that is on the subject of scrofula) will do little more than show the weakness of our ability when compared with his Majesty's, who cureth more in one year than all the surgeons in London have done in an age.' Brown, who was also one of his Majesty's chirurgeons, and chirurgeon of his Majesty's hospital in London, makes a statement similar to that of Wiseman, and asserts that Cromwell was anxious to exercise this as well as the other prerogatives of royalty, but that the practice

practice failed in his hands, he having no more right to the healing power than he had to the legal jurisdiction.' It seems, however, that the faith of Wiseman was not so absolute but that he deemed it expedient to add to his other dissertations sixty-fourclosely-printed pages on the history of the king's-evil, and the mode of treating it by ordinary means. It is probable that there were others who had no faith at all, although it might be dangerous to express their sentiments - one Thomas Rosewell having, in the year 1684, been tried on a charge of high treason, for having publicly said that the people made a flocking to the king upon pretence of being healed of the king's-evil, which he could not do, but that they, being priests and prophets, could do as much.' Rosewell was found guilty, but afterwards doned. King William declined to exercise this part of the royal prerogative, but it was resumed by Queen Anne, as is shown by a passage in the Life of Dr. Johnson,' in which it is stated that he was taken to her Majesty when a child to be touched for the evil, by the advice of an eminent physician, Sir John Floyer.' The good sense of King George I. put an end to this absurdity, but it continued to flourish in France under Louis XV., and in this country it was soon followed by others, over which the royal authority had no control.

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'I find,' says Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter dated Lovere, July, 1748, that tar-water has succeeded to Ward's drops; and it is possible that some other form of quackery has by this time taken place of that. The English are, more than any other nation, infatuated by the prospect of universal medicine,' &c. &c.

The history of the medicine which is here referred to is singular enough; proposed as it was, not by a charlatan seeking to impose on the public for his own profit, but by a benevolent clergyman, a metaphysician and mathematician: a philosopher distinguished alike for the clearness of his perceptions and the acuteness of his reasonings. Bishop Berkley, having proved to his own satisfaction that the existence of a material world is a mere delusion, did not hesitate to believe that the drinking of tar-water would mitigate and even prevent the smallpox and erysipelas; that nothing is so useful as this in cases of painful ulcers of the bowels; in consumptive coughs, and ulcers of the lungs, with expectoration of pus; that it cures asthma, dropsy, and indigestion, the king's-evil, all kinds of sores, and the foulest disorders.' Time and experience only confirmed him in these opinions. In a subsequent publication he says, I freely own that I suspect tar-water to be a panacea, And as the old philosopher cried aloud from the housetop to his fellow-citizens," Educate your children," so, if I had a situation