haps, if not regardless, of the mischief inflicted-satisfied to do as they were taught, and follow blind-fold in the ways of their predecessors. Verily it would seem that

"Ne'er did old Faith with her smooth bondage bind

Eyes more devoutly willing to be blind."

SECTION VI.-The general character of Medical Practice-High authorities quoted-Successive variations-Conscientiousness no palliation for the evils caused by Drug Practitioners— Perversity of medical men in rejecting natural Therapeutic Agents-Their revival and successful progress notwithstanding medical opposition—Honest inquirers become zealous advo

cates-Conclusion.

FROM the evidence which has been adduced-and it could easily be increased to almost any extent-the conclusion is irresistibly forced on the mind, that the general character of medical practice is essentially speculative and necessarily dangerous. As Dr. Bostock, a highly-esteemed authority, has declared :— "Every dose of medicine given is a blind experiment upon the vitality of the patient." It becomes, therefore, a serious matter when it is considered that there are some twenty thousand members of the medical profession in the United Kingdom, nineteen-twentieths of whom are actively engaged in the pernicious administration of Physic, or in making blind experiments on the vitality of their patients! Of how many of the twenty thousand could it be truthfully affirmed that they are "duly qualified" to administer physic-poison even with ordinary safety as regards health and life?—of how many would it be calumnious to declare that they are virtually pretenders to knowledge and skill which they do not possess, and in so far rank no higher than veritable empirics in practice-sacrificing to their false system innumerable credulous victims ?

This is not the language of exaggeration, as the evidence

already given fully testifies. It is more than justified by the declarations of additional medical authorities who know the

profession well. 'Charlatanism," says the Medical Critic and Psychological Journal, “is by no means confined to illegal practice. To see the fullest-fledged charlatanism we need not go beyond the bounds of the profession. The most refined quacks stalk under cover of a legal qualification." "The Profession," observes one of its most esteemed members, Dr. Wilks, of Guy's Hospital, London, "is not injured by Morison or Holloway, but by those ten thousand worse charlatans, who, under sanction of the law, are eating away our vitals. Let us look to ourselves; the disease is an internal one."

Thus we have superadded to the essentially destructive character of Drug Medication in itself, a reckless charlatanism in practice, that necessarily increases its destructiveness. There is nothing settled and fixed in practice, and hence, says Sir Wm. Hamilton, "the history of medicine is, on the one hand, nothing less than a history of variations, and on the other, only a still more marvellous history of how every successive variation has, by medical bodies, been first furiously denounced, and then bigotedly adopted."

Now, what do such "successive variations" in the practice of physic really mean, but a successive variation in the modes employed for putting patients to death? Is not this an irresistible conclusion? Nay more, it is a conclusion insisted on by the highest medical authorities! "I am incessantly led," said Benjamin Bush, one of the most celebrated physicians of America, “to make an apology for the instability of the theories and practice of physic. Those physicians generally become the most eminent who have most thoroughly emancipated themselves from the tyranny of the schools of medicine. Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of disease, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. What mischiefs have we not done under the belief of false facts ́ and false theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases; we have done more—we have increased their fatality!"

Another high authority, Dr. Coggswell of Boston, with equal candour observes-" I wish not to detract from the exalted profession to which I have the honour to belong, and which includes many of my warmest friends; yet it cannot answer to my conscience to withhold the acknowledgment of my firm belief, that the medical profession, with its prevailing mode of practice, is productive of more evil than good, and were it absolutely abolished, mankind would be infinitely the gainer." Thus

"We speak of things which we daily witness," says the British and Foreign Medical Review, January, 1838," and the effect on our minds is, the growing up of a belief, to which every year adds strength, that not a few invalids are annually destroyed by mal-practices, for which, if there is no moral excuse, there is, unfortunately, no legal punishment." In 1846, Dr. Sir John Forbes declared-"One of the besetting sins of English practitioners at present, is the habitual employment of powerful medicines, in a multitude of cases that do not require their use; mercury, iodine, colchicum, antimony, drastic purgatives, and excessive blood-letting, are frightfully misused in this manner."

In January, 1861, the Medico- Chirurgical Review said:"Would that some physician of mature experience had opened the academical year by a grave, unsparing exposure of the practices now in vogue, of poisoning the sick and feeble with food, which in quantity they vainly strive to digest, of spoiling blood that is healthy, of killing that which is disordered, of maddening the brain by wine, beer, and brandy without stintthus quenching the intellect in its last expiring rays, forestalling the unconsciousness of death, and dismissing the patient drunken from the world! This is but a reaction, we are told, from the

opposite extreme of ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago-an equivalent of slaughter in compensation for the countless thousands who were then bled, purged, and starved to death! In this balance of destruction, the result is one of small value to the statistician-to the physician it is a double shame!"

Thus every phase through which medical practice passes→→ every "successive variation" is alike destructive! "Less slaughter, I am convinced," says Dr Reid, in his Essays on Insanity and Hypochondriasis, "has been effected by the sword than by the lancet-that minute instrument of mighty mischief." And with respect to the wholesale destruction of infantile life, by drugging, he delivered his opinion with equal emphasis-" Of the cases of mortality in the earlier months of our existence, no small proportion consists of those who have sunk under the oppression of pharmaceutical filth. More infantile subjects in this metropolis (London) are, perhaps, diurnally destroyed by the mortar and pestal, than in the ancient Bethlehem fell victims in one day to the Herodian massacre!" Subsequently, when Dr. Reid's judgment had been matured by more enlarged experience, so far from retracting this opinion, which had excited the displeasure of the "mortar and pestal" interest, he said:

“I wish that the years of experience and reflection which have since intervened had convinced me that the remark was destitute of foundation. Infanticide, when perpetrated under the impulse of maternal desperation, or in the agony of anticipated disgrace, is a subject of astonishment and horror; but if a helpless victim be drugged to death, or poisoned by the forced ingurgitation of nauseous and essentially noxious potions, we lament the result merely, without thinking about the means which inevitably led to its occurrence. CONSCIENCE FEELS LITTLE CONCERN IN CASES OF MEDICINAL MURDER. The ordinary habit of jesting upon these subjects in convivial or familiar conversation, has an unhappy tendency to harden the heart, and inclines us to regard with an inhuman levity those dark and horrible catastrophes which too frequently arise from professional ignorance or mistake!"

In the contemplation of such a fearful state of things, it is nothing, indeed, to the purpose to allege, that Medical Practitioners are generally conscientious, humane, and benevolent,

undertaking great labour for paltry remuneration, and highly disinterested in bestowing gratuitous services on the afflicted. Admitting this to be a characteristic of the profession, what relevancy has it to the subject under consideration? Does it make the practice of Physic less dangerous? Does it convert what is unnatural and false into what is rational and true? Sincerity is not a test of truth, and no amount of conscientiousness in adhering to the deceptions of an erroneous system can excuse the evil committed under it. Honest investigation to discover the truth, and an inflexible conscientiousness in following its teachings, is a primary duty that devolves on every medical practitioner; and no man is justified morally, and in the sight of God, in administering poisonous drugs to a human being, unless he has a positive assurance that beneficial results will follow. Mere conscientiousness, mere blind conformity to what he was taught, can never warrant a credulous trifling with human life.

When patients were deliberately bled to death by the physicians who flourished during the sanguinary era a ruthless Phlebotomy then raging as the established system of Medicine; or when others were hurried to their graves in a state of intoxication by the "Brandy School" superseding the former, doubtless the great majority of the practitioners who thus "slaughtered wholesale," were eminently conscientious, but did that change the essential character of their practice? Did that make their killing less murderous?-less woful to the interests of society and the happiness of families? And so under all the various systems of Drug Medication that have prevailed, and equally under existing practice, drug poisons may be most conscientiously administered in firm reliance on a credulous hope that some good, or at least no evil, may result; but does that make poisons less poisonous?—does it enable the human economy to assimilate poison as nutritious food?-does it reconcile the natural antagonism which exists in Nature between what feeds and sustains, and what debilitates and destroys vitality? Does it, in short, justify, in the smallest degree, the murderous