to Latin and Greek, Hindu and Chinese, and other historical writers, are most profuse, occupying nearly one-fourth of his pages. It is simply impossible that he could have read all the works to which he refers, even had he lived long and done nothing else. Sprengel died in 1833, soon after the publication of the second edition in French of his great history.'

It is not a correct criticism to estimate a physician's influence on the advancement of his profession by his personal success in practice. If it were, Boerhaave would be accounted superior to Cullen, for he made an immense fortune in practice; and Talbot for the same reason would stand higher than Jenner, or Good, or Harvey; and Sir Astley Cooper's achievements would be greater than any of his English predecessors, for his earnings exceeded a hundred thousand dollars a year, besides winning his way as physician to the Royal family and a baronetcy. And Mesmer, who exploited "Animal Magnetism" at an earlier day, would stand with the most eminent, for he accepted several thousand livres for his discovery, or rather to exploit it, besides receiving enormous winnings from his dupes and patients. He died in Germany in 1815 at the age of eightyfour, leaving to the profession an unread treatise on Magnetism and a name to a nervous phenomenon which the moderns have termed hypnosis.

BENJAMIN RUSH

One of the earliest and most conspicuous names in the medical annals of the New World at this period was Benjamin Rush, who obtained the pre-eminence of being a great physician, statesman, and philanthropist. Dr. Rush was born near Philadelphia in 1745. He was contemporary, therefore, with most of the great physicians of the eighteenth century. Rush was educated in Princeton, and afterwards studied medicine at Edinburgh, London, and Paris. Returning from Europe he was appointed Professor of Chemistry in the Medical College of Philadelphia. In the War of the Revolution he was Surgeon-General. He was a versatile writer on many subjects. In 1791 he was appointed to the Chair of "Institutes of Medicine" in the University of Pennsylvania. He was a great teacher in medicine and contributed much to the advancement of medicine in America. He has the distinction of visiting and prescribing for one hundred patients a day. He wrote several medical treatises, among them "Medical Inquiries and Observations," in two volumes, and "Diseases of the Mind," in which he maintained that insanity was not a disease of the brain, but of the cerebral arteries. This he states on the facts of dissection of the brain of insane cases. It is evident that his post-mortem observation of cerebral processes and conditions were too limited to justify his making such an assertion. Another

strong insistence of his was that debility was the predisposing cause of all disease.

"Rush on the Mind," although obsolete now, was much esteemed in its day, and it continued to be used as a text-book in American medical colleges down to within living memory. It was prized especially by reason of the support the author gave to the philosophy of mind as distinct from brain function. Dr. Rush was a devout theologian and could not entertain any view of the philosophy of mind and spirit that savored in the least of so-called materiality. Science of mentality, or of cerebral processes, involving thought and feeling, was under the dominance of metaphysics at that time. Dr. Rush attended Washington in his last illness (1797). Rush himself died in 1813.

Dr. Rush was one of the most popular teachers of his time; and his opinions upon medical subjects were looked upon by his students as oracular; and his attitude and bearing in the lecture room gave the impression that he held that view of himself. He often assumed the manner of the celebrated pulpit orator, Whitefield. "His voice was full and sonorous, strong and clear, so that he was easily heard in a large room of four hundred and thirty students, even in his sixty-eighth year." He was also a fine reader, and took delight in exhibiting the art.

Sometimes his enthusiasm would seem to violate the sobriety of science, as when declaiming against