and systematic mystification-Professors, who lure the student by every possible promise to their schools, and when once in their net, keep him there by every possible artifice and pretext which collusion and corruption can devise! one day entangling him in a web of unmeaning sophistry-another stimulating him to waste his time in splitting straws, or in magnifying hairs now encouraging him in a butterfly chase after shadows-now engaging him in a wordy and worthless disputation with his fellows! How is that student to be repaid the capital of time and money he has expended upon what he calls his education? How, but by deluding and mystifying in his turn the suffering sick who apply to him for relief? For relief?-Vain hope! Look at the numbers of persons who live, or try to live by physic-doctors, surgeons, apothecaries, druggists, cuppers, nurses-and ask yourselves how even one tithe of these can do so, but by alternately playing upon the passions and prejudices-the hopes, fears, and ignorance of the public?—in one case inflicting visits too numerous to be necessary; in another, employing draughts, mixtures, or measures, too expensive, too frequently and too fruitlessly repeated, to be all for the benefit of the patient! Think you, that the members of the medical profession are different in their feelings from every other human being-that their minds are so constituted, that, under the most terrible temptations, they can so far set at defiance the stern law of necessity, as, in their present crowded and starving state, to receive with open arms a system that threatens so many of their order with ruin? Is it in the nature of things that they will welcome a practical improvement, by which the practitioner may, in a few hours, cut short cases and chances, which, by daily visitations, or by three draughts a-day, might be profitably protracted to a month, if the system on which it is based were only advocated in calm, mellifluous, and complimentary language? As soon may you expect a needy attorney to be prevailed upon by his client's tears to cut short a chancery suit; or the master of a sailing-smack to listen patiently to the praises of steam; or a coach proprietor to admit the safety and superiority of railroad over coach conveyance, when estimating the losses they shall respectively sustain by the too general use of the superior motive power. What though the present condition of medical practice be less the crime of the profession, than the fault of the legislature, that permits men clothed with collegiate authority-professors, enjoying the sanction of its protection-annually to lure, by misrepresentation and lying promises, thousands of credulous and unsuspecting youths into a path strewed, even in the very best of times, with thorns and briars innumerable? Better far that one-half of these should at once abandon a walk of life, where the competition is so keen and close, that comparatively few in the present day can live honestly by means of it -than, that they should hereafter have to eat their precarious bread, at the daily and hourly sacrifice of their own honour, and their patients' interests. Who will tell me half-measures will be of any avail, under circumstances like these? Gentlemen, in corrupt and difficult times, half-measures, so far from succeeding, have either been taken as a sign of weakness in the cause, or as a symptom of timidity on the part of the advocate. Away, then, with half-measures!-away with the idea of conciliating men, the already rotten tree of whose sustenance you sap-the long-cemented system, whose existence depends, not on a virtuous adherence to nature and truth, but upon a collusive and fraudulent perversion of both! When persons, little versant with the present state of medical affairs, see men of established name supporting a system of dishonesty and error, they too often doubt the light of their own reason. "Would Dr. So-and-so," they ask, "and Mr. Such-aone, hold this language, if they did not themselves believe it-men so respectable, and so amiable in private life?" But tell these simpletons, that Dr. So-and-so's Bread depends upon his Belief-that Mr. Such-a-one's family must fall with his fading fortunes, if the father, in the language of Hazlitt, "ceased to support that which he had so long supported, and which supported

him"-and you bring an argument which, though not quite convincing in itself, will at least compel a closer investigation of the system it is your wish to expose and crush. "To abandon usurped power," says Robertson, in his History of Scotland, "to renounce lucrative error, are sacrifices which the virtue of individuals has, on some occasions, offered to truth; but from any society of men no such effort can be expected. The corruptions of society, recommended by common utility, and justified by universal practice, are viewed by its members without shame or horror; and reformation never proceeds from themselves, but is always forced upon them by some foreign hand." Gentlemen, I have been blamed for the tone and spirit in which I have spoken of my adversaries-I have been asked, Why assail their motives -why not keep yourself to their errors? But in this particular instance, I have been only the humble imitator of a great master-a man whose name will at once call up every sentiment of veneration—the indomitable Luther. Magnis componere parva, I have followed in his wake-I hope soon to add, passibus æquis. Think you, the Reformation of the church could have progressed with the same rapidity, had its most forward champion been honeymouthed-had his lip been all smiles, and his language all politeness; or had he been content, in pointless and unimpassioned periods, to direct attention solely to the doctrinal errors of Rome? No; he thundered, he denounced, he heaped invective upon invective, and dealt in every form of language which could tell best against his enemies, whether in exposure or attack.— Too wise to leave them the moral influence of a presumed integrity, they were far from meriting, he courageously tore away the cloak of sanctity and sincerity, with which, in the eyes of the vulgar, they had been too long invested. Had he done otherwise, he might have obtained the posthumous praise of moderation, at the price of defeat and the stake.

Gentlemen, let it not for a moment be supposed, that in thus sweepingly arraigning the present system of medical policy, I have the remotest wish to degrade the profession of the physician. It has ever, on the contrary, been my object to improve the social position of my order; to render it useful, honourable, and honoured, that kings may still, as they once did, choose their counsellors from it. Nor is it my wish for an instant to insinuate that, among the individual members of the profession, there are not numerous exceptions to the line of conduct too generally pursued. In every one of its grades and conditions-apothecary, surgeon, and physician-I have had the pleasure to meet gentlemen who not only heartily join me in deploring the present shameful state of practice, but who aid me with their best efforts to expose and correct it. One and all of these honourable persons acknowledge, that, unless some great and speedy change in the mode of educating and remunerating medical men be introduced by the legislature, medicine must shortly cease to be regarded in the light of a liberal profession; for as things now stand, the only sure path to lucrative popularity in physic is a complete sacrifice of conscience and principle on the part of the physician. How often have I been told, in my own case, that by courting the apothecary, and offering up incense at the false shrine of the professors, I might easily and cheaply obtain the bubble reputation, to be blown me by their breath; while, by exposing the intrigues of the schools, and the collusions and corruptions of the professional world, not only do I stand as one man to a host, but I lay myself open to the secret stabs of a thousand unseen assassins! To tempters of that sort, this has been my answer; let it be yours also

Slave! I have put my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die!

That hazard now, thank heaven, is small. The daily increasing number of upright and honourable practitioners who espouse my views, place me already sufficiently far above the reach of my enemies, to enable me to despise them thoroughly; and at this moment I feel as secure of victory, as at any one period of my life I feared defeat! As yet, I have only assailed the system

carefully avoiding individual attack. True, I have repelled the attacks of others, somewhat strongly, too; but that was in self-defence. If in tearing away the veil of iniquity, I have not altogether remained unscathed, I have, at least, the satisfaction to know, that my enemies have done everything but laugh at the blows I dealt them. If it be said, I have used language too strong for the occasion, I answer in the words of Burke: "When IGNORANCE and CORRUPTION have usurped the PROFESSOR'S CHAIR, and placed themselves in the seats of science and virtue, it is high time to speak out. We know that the doctrines of folly are of great use to the professors of vice. We know that it is one of the signs of a corrupt and degenerate age, and one of the means of insuring its further corruption and degeneracy, to give lenient epithets to corruptions and crimes.' What reformer has not been called a "violent person?" none that I ever heard of. Now, Gentlemen, to the more orthodox matter of this lecture.

We have hitherto spoken of the brain as a unity; yet this organ is divided into two hemispheres. Like the features of the face, it is two-fold. We have two eyebrows, two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, and in the early fœtal state, the mouth and chin are separated in the middle; you have the marks of this original separation in the infant; I may also say in the adult. Now, though a man may lose one eye, he is not therefore blind; or though he lose the hearing of one ear, he is not necessarily deaf. It is just possible that a small part of one of the hemispheres of the brain may, in like manner, become diseased, and the subject of it shall appear to reason very fairly to the last. But that must be a shallow observer, indeed, who from such a possible fact should draw the fictitious inference, that even one hemisphere of the brain may be disorganized throughout its entire substance, without the intellectual powers being at all disturbed! If you read of such facts, set them down as false facts. The brain, then, like the body, in some of its parts is double, yet like the body in its integrity, the brain is a unity, and like the same body it has also a diversity of parts. That the scalpel has hitherto failed to trace any well-marked divisions betwixt the various cerebral portions to which-phrenologists have ascribed variety of function, is no argument against this doctrine. Do not all the different parts of the frame merge into each other, the elbow into the arm, the arm into the hand, &c.? What is more clearly a unity than the hand? Yet do we not frequently find, from the weakness of one or more of its joints or muscles, an inability on the part of its possessor to do a particular work, though he may still accomplish many others by means of it? It is the same thing with the head. Partial disease of the brain produces partial intellectual injury, and you see the effects of such injury in those persons who reason rightly upon every subject but one, "monomaniacs," as they are called. Oh! I want no better proof of diversity of parts in the brain than this. Like every other organ, the brain of man commences its fœtal existence in the lowest type of the same organ of those animals that possess a brain, gradually assuming, by additions and superadditions, the form of the infant brain. In some instances, as in the case of other organs of the body, one or more of these superadditions are never properly developed. The result you can anticipate :-Idiocy, according to the degree and locality of the defect; and yet there are medical twaddlers who have the audacity to deny that the brain is the organ of intellect! Were their statements correct, why confide the treatment of mental derangement to the physicians-to men who, for the cure of mental derangement, employ the identical material agency by which they profess to cure a diseased limb, or other injured member of the material body? You might as well talk of "walking" apart from the matter of the legs, as of mind or thinking power apart from the matter of brain! This much I have thought it right to premise before entering upon the subject of

DYSPEPSIA OR INDIGESTION;

for to the state of the brain and nervous system, we shall have to ascribe the

disease. When treating of pulmonary consumption, at a former meeting, I explained to you that no individual could possibly suffer from any complaint whatever, without his digestion being more or less implicated. The patient who labours under any severe form of disease, such as gout, consumption, or erysipelas, has all the symptoms, or shades of symptom, that medical men group together under the head of Indigestion; but the superadded symptom which, from its prominence or locality, may dispose the physician to term the disease consumption, erysipelas, or gout, may also dispose him to overlook, or esteem as insignificant, the coincident errors and disorders of the digestive apparatus. In the lower and more subdued forms of fever, the patient very often has no particular tendency to decomposition in any organ or locality; but from every function being more or less wrong, he very naturally turns his attention to his stomach or bowels, the errors of which come more particularly under the immediate cognisance of his feelings. Such a patient will complain to you of flatulency and acidity, or of that distressing symptom termed "water-brash." If you ask him about his appetite, he will tell you it is " so-so ;" or "he cares nothing about eating;" or it is positively "excellent" which last, I need scarcely tell you, means that it is morbidly craving. Ten to one, it is capricious-the patient now wishing for this, and now for the other, and rejecting what he desired most, the moment it comes before him. Perhaps he has thirst. He is wearied upon the least exertion; has little inclination to get up in the morning, and when he does get up, he is indolent, and dawdles his time away. He is apathetic in mind as he is indolent in body; and he has often a great disposition to sleep, especially after meals. Others, again, will just be the reverse of all this; these perpetually harp upon some particular topic-fidget themselves and every body else about trifles, and look always at the dark side of life. Some fly in a passion for nothing, or upon the least contradiction, and in a few minutes after the gust of passion has passed away, they lament their mental weakness. Their nights are either sleepless or broken and disturbed by unpleasant dreams. One moment they dream of robbers, from whom they cannot escape; or they are on the eve of tumbling down a precipice; dreaming sometimes within a dream -asking themselves, even in the very act of dreaming, whether they dream or not-and they will satisfy themselves by a process of unreason, that they are actually awake and walk the air.. Even during the day, many of these patients have their dreams or reveries-pleasurable sometimes, but more often the reverse; they see things either as through a glass darkly," or their perceptions are all exaggerated and unnatural. Phantoms may even pass before them at mid-day, phantoms such as they see in their dreams of the night. The very colours of things may be altered to their eyes-red appearing to them green, and vice versa. Even the shapes and dimensions of bodies may be quite changed to their sight-though the greater number have sufficient judgment remaining, to know this to be an optical delusion merely. John Hunter had the sensation that his own body was reduced to the size of a pigmy! I have met with some patients who have even at times doubted their own existence. Light and shade have wonderful effects upon most invalids of this class. One is perfectly miserable, except when he is in the sunshine; another cannot bear the light at all. Ringing in the ears, or partial deafness, is a common complaint of dyspeptic persons. Some can only hear distinctly during the noise of passing carriages, or in the hum of a city, or of falling waters; while the ears of others are so sensitive, they complain of the ticking of the clock. The sense of touch is very often similarly vitiated; one patient having partial or general numbness; another, his feelings so acute, that he shrinks with pain if you merely touch him. Occasionally, though more rarely, you have examples of a reverse kind; the patient in that case will say, "Oh, do not take your hand away, the pressure does me good-it acts like magnetism."

66

All kinds of aches are complained of by dyspeptic patients-headache per

haps most frequent-headache, for which, on the hypothetical assumption of fulness of blood in the brain, the leech, lancet, and cupping-glass, are so frequently in requisition. But to what end? In the words of Abernethy, supposing such assumption to be correct, "Does blood-letting cure diseases in which there is a fulness of blood in the head? It must be granted, that in many instances, it temporarily alleviates them, but in others, it fails to relieve, and even aggravates them." What are those headaches, those night and day dreams, all those various signs and sensations, but the effects of a great instability of brain, now brought on by one thing, now by another? I have known the most severe and distressing headaches arise from loss of blood, and I have known them originate in a long fast. Surely for such diseases, the leech and the lancet are not the proper remedies. But, Gentlemen, there are many other ways by which the brain may be weakened. You may as certainly exhaust it by prolonged literary or other mental labour, as by starvation or loss of blood; for there are times to think, and times to cease thinking; and if the brain be eternally harassed by an over anxiety in any of the pursuits of life; if it be always at work on one subject, not only will there be headache, or confusion of head, but the constitution must be injured. How can this organ painfully revolve again and again the occurrences of the external world, and give the proper attention to the internal economy, over which it presides? When you listen to an orator or a preacher, whose discourse powerfully affects you, the brain becomes so engaged, that it cannot at the same time attend to the breathing; and you are, therefore, compelled ever and anon to draw a long breath; you must take a deep sigh, to make up for the ordinary succession of short inspirations and expirations, which constitute the natural art of breathing. Now, Gentlemen, if the function of the lungs be so easily disturbed in this way, can you doubt that the heart, stomach, bowels, and other parts, may be similarly influenced? What are the complaints of men who have much on their minds, bankers, merchants, and great lawyers? what the diseases of aged persons-persons whose brains become weaker and weaker by the slow but certain operation of time? Do not these patients constantly complain of their stomach and bowels? Do not many of them suffer from palpitations of the heart; from giddiness and sensations like fainting, with a fear of falling? Now, Gentlemen, this giddy sensation, this disposition to fall, is most commonly felt upon suddenly raising the head, or in rising from a chair. What surer sign of cerebral weakness? Yet, not long since, two gentlemen, each upwards of seventy, informed me they had been bled and leeched by their respective apothecaries, for this disease of pure cerebral exhaustion. Bless my life, you may bleed or purge a healthy man into this state any day!

In these diseases, one patient will tell you, he is troubled by a feeling of sinking and pain of stomach, which is only relieved by eating. Another suffers from spasm, and pain of the heart or stomach, with acidity or flatulence, the moment he begins to eat; and in either of these cases the pain may sometimes become so violent, that if it did not soon go off, the patient must die.Now, this kind of spasm, whether affecting the stomach or heart, is a disease for which you are expected to give immediate relief, and nothing will do so more readily than a glass of hot water-water as hot as the patient can possibly drink it. This point of practice we owe to John Hunter, who, having frequently suffered from spasm of the stomach, tried every thing he could think of, and among others hot water. The ease which this gave him, led him to extend its use to his dyspeptic patients; and my own experience of its virtues, enables me to bear him out in the encomiums he has passed upon it. To this simple means, palpitation, spasm, headache, wind, and acidity, will all sometimes yield as to a charm. Is not this another instance in proof, how mere change of temperature acts on the body under disease? Now, as hydrocyanic acid very frequently gives the same immediate relief in every one of these affections, we at once see that its medicinal power must depend upon