imitation; but assuredly it is not designed to raise up such a generation of medical practitioners as the interests of science and of the public so impressively demand.

SECTION V.-Value of Medical Opinion considered-Experience alone an unsafe criterion to judge by-Great knowledge consistent with gross ignorance-Scientific experience testifies against Drug Medication—Admissions of High Medical Authorities, Sir John Forbes, Sir Thomas Watson, &c., concerning the Inutility of Drugging-The Helpless Condition of the Drug School.

DEFERENCE to the opinion of Medical men, as such, is alone warranted, on the supposition, that they are really what they pretend to be educated gentlemen, members of a learned profession, with minds trained to observe sagaciously, to discriminate judiciously, and reason logically. But if their educational acquirements would not qualify them to stand on the same platform with pupil-teachers in the village schools of Scotland, as Dr. Alexander Wood affirmed, or enable them to pass an examination for such a civil service appointment as a common lettercarrier, as Sir Dominic Corrigan declared, how is it possible to have faith in their educated judgment, or to repose confidence in their professional opinion?

But it may be alleged, that men very ignorant indeed, on entering the profession, acquire knowledge and skill by experience. Perhaps so, yet it would be a fatal error to suppose that any amount of experience necessarily gives wisdom, or imparts skill -renders medical opinion valuable, or its effects salutary in practice. There must be a mind capable of profiting by experience, and then experience itself must he acquired, not in the ways of error, but in the pursuit of truth. These are the imperative conditions necessary to any profit being derived from experi

ence.

Long and laborious practice in scholastic dialectics made the Schoolmen dexterous sophists and wonderful proficients in metaphysical subtleties, but never revealed to them one vivifying truth contained in the great volume of nature that lay unopened before them. On the contrary, their monotonous experience was altogether in a vicious circle, and only tended to confirm ignorance and deepen prejudice-to contract intellect, and render antipathies to truthful change more inveterate. So with the experience of the great majority of medical men. Guided by false principles, and labouring in pursuit of false systems, what can a life-long experience do for them? It cannot change the essential nature and eternal fitness of things. All the toiling industry and patient plodding of all the medical men that ever lived have not yet succeeded in extorting from nature the secret of one solitary Drug to cure disease! Practice can never make perfect in such a pursuit, an experience thus reaped is, indeed, but "the wisdom of fools!"

Operating on trained intelligence, on a candid truth-seeking mind, experience undoubtedly performs a noble office-it corrects the superstitions and errors of early and confiding life-it tests the teaching of maturer years, it passes through the alembic of reason, the dogmas of Schools, the theories of systems, and the crambe bis cocta prelections of collegiate infallibilities-it winnows the wheat from the chaff-vindicates the high prerogatives of mind, and by exploring Nature, discovers truth. But unfortunately, the history of the world shows that it is only a select, and often persecuted few, that have thus endeavoured to make experience available.

In ages past, as well as at present, there have been minds so constituted and cultivated, as to find in experience a true source of knowledge, but they are to be counted as units in comparison with the millions of ill-constituted, ill-cultivated minds that have only found in experience a confirmation of their prejudices and errors. Hence to the great majority of medical practitioners, Experience performs the same office, and with precisely similar results in the authentication of erroneous pre

conceptions, as in the case of the Sultan described by Byron, who

"Saw with his own eyes the moon was round;
Was also certain that the earth was square,
Because he had journeyed fifty miles and found,
No sign that it was circular anywhere."

Dr. Graves, in an introductory lecture on Medical Education, delivered in the Meath Hospital, Dublin, dwelt with freedom and force on this waste of experience on the ordinary run of meHe remarked how all the lessons of experience are thrown away on

dical men.

'Many an old practitioner, whose errors have grown, and have increased in strength during a long succession of years, because from a defect in his original education, he commenced practice without having acquired the power or habit of accurate observation; because he had not in his youth been taught to reason justly upon the facts presented to his view; because not having learned to think accurately, he contracted a loose and careless mode of examining the progress of disease, and the effects of remedies; and, consequently, the lapse of time has had no other effect upon his errors than that of rendering them more inveterate. Such a man has generally an overweening confidence in his own judgment; he never detects, or is conscious of his own mistakes; and instead of improvement, years bring only an increased attachment to his opinions—a deeper blindness in examining the results of his own practice; and do not such persons abound in every branch of the profession? Believe me, gentlemen, the quacks who cover our walls with their advertisements, vend not annually to the community more poison than is distributed according to the prescriptions of our routine and licensed practitioners."

What a fearful description this gives of medical practice, and by a gentleman, too, of the finest character, and most eminent professional repute! It is conclusive, however, on one point-that the most extensive practice, when based on erroneous principles, can never become natural and truthful, nor lead to desirable results; and also, that experience, no matter how enlarged and prolonged, operating on ill-trained, ill-educated minds, warped by prejudice, like seed sown on an arid desert, is never destined to take root and fructify. Just as two parallel lines, though extended into the infinity of space, can never approach nearer to each other than when first projected, so experi

ence in the practice of Drug Medication, though extended over thousands of years, if essentially false in its inception, can never approximate the healthful and sanatory from being doggedly adhered to. What then becomes of the experience of physicians who spend their lives in following illusory systems?

Yet experience, wisely employed, is invaluable to a medical practitioner, capable of following and profiting by its unerring teaching. It stands in opposition to the speculative theories and fanciful systems of Physic, which, propagated by schools, have inflicted incalculable misery on mankind, and which are now followed as keenly as ever. "In politics and morality," observes Dr. Heberden, "Experience may be called the teacher of fools; but in the study of nature there is no other guide to true knowledge." But how do practitioners in physic, as a body, follow such a guide?

"The Drug-Physician," says Dr. Edward Johnston, "Can never find a reason for the administration of the drug he prescribes. If he be asked for one, his answer is, that his experience has convinced him that it is useful in such cases. Nothing can be more convenient than this answer. silences all further questioning, and admits of no argument.

It

But, then, if you walk straight from Physician No. 1 to Physician No. 2, he will, in nine cases out of ten, give you a drug whose nature and effects are as different from that prescribed by the first Physician as any two things can well be. Yet, if you inquire of the second why he orders for your case the particular drug or drugs which he prescribes, he will give you the same answer as the first. He will tell you that his experience has satisfied him that the drug he has ordered for you, is useful in such cases. At this rate, remedies for diseases must be as plentiful as blackberries !

"But what possible reliance can be placed upon this sort of experience? What possible reliance can be placed upon the experience of any one out of twenty men, when it is found that the experience of each of the twenty is contradicted by the experience of all the others? Every man prescribes according to his own experience. But the practice of different medical men in the same disease differs as widely as the poles. Their experience therefore, must be equally different and contradictory. What value can be placed on such experience? The truth is, that what they call experience is mere accident. Some two or three patients from some fortuitous combination of circumstances, or other unintelligible cause, have happened to get well of some particular disease, while taking some particular drug. This, the Physician calls his experience; and he continues all his life

afterwards to prescribe that drug for that disease, although, perhaps, he never cures another patient with it. But he goes on hoping and hoping in every fresh case of the same disease, that the same drug will again succeed.

"A friend of mine once consulted six London physicians in one day, and then brought all their prescriptions to me, and it was most amusing to read over and compare these prescriptions. There were not two which, in the slightest degree, resembled each other. I proposed to my friend that he should take them all six. But he adopted a wiser course, and took none of them. The truth is that, in the treatment of chronic disease at least, the exhibition of drugs is pure speculation. There is nothing certain in the matter, but the certainty of doing mischief.

"The result of all this is that an entirely new set of diseases has sprung up among mankind, which have regularly taken their places amongst other ordinary human maladies, and are classed together as drug-diseases, and each is named after the drug that produces it. And we hear medical men talking familiarly together, and as unconcernedly about mercurial tremor, mercurial eythema, arsenical disease, iodism, narcotism, &c., &c., as though these disorders were inflicted upon us by Providence instead of by their own mal-practices! It is by no means uncommon for one medical man to be called in to cure a disease which has been caused by the drugs of his medical brother."-Practice of Hydropathy, p. 83, &c.

Now, what does this diversity of opinion, of experience, of practice import? Is it significant of health or death to patients? Were Physic a science, or possessed of the slightest pretensions to accuracy and certainty in its theories or practices, could such discordant and destructive diversity possibly exist? Anatomists, Physiologists, Pathologists, Botanists, Naturalists, Geologists, Astronomers, Mathematicians-in short, the professors of every scientific pursuit exhibit no such diversity of opinion as the result of their experience. The great book of Nature is open to them all in their several departments of inquiry-they all read and observe, and no matter in what quarter of the globe Nature may be questioned, the result is the same. In the experiences, the observations, the conclusions of all there is a harmonious concurrence--a beautiful uniformity that bears the impress of truth. Is that so with Physicians in the same town or country, let alone in Europe? Physical truth is the same all the world over; but in the Physic of Physicians what is there truthful and certain save-disease and death?