the change of temperature which it electrically produces. Of the various cordials to which you may have recourse, for spasmodic pain of the heart or stomach, there is none so good as Noyeau; and the virtue of this "strong water" depends very much upon the prussic acid it contains. Of all the remedies with which I am acquainted, there is none equal to this acid, in convulsions and spasms of every kind. But spasms of the stomach and heart are not the only ones of which dyspeptic patients complain. Some are troubled with a sense of tension of the brain; others with a tightness of the throat or chest; and some, particularly females, suffer from a spasmodic affection of the gullet, which gives them a feeling as if they had a ball there.— Others are subject to stitch or pain of the side, produced by cramp of the muscles of the ribs. How correctly Shakspeare described the nature of these pains, when he made Prospero say to Caliban in the Tempest

For this be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stitches, that shall pen thy breath up!

The common practice in these cases is to say, "Draw your breath;" and if you cannot do so for the pain, "inflammation" is the imaginary goblin of the doctor, and blood-letting in some of its forms the too ready remedy to which he flies; how vainly for the patient-how profitable for himself, truth must one day tell! To small doses of nitrate of silver, prussic acid, or quinine, such pains will often yield, after having resisted every form of depletion, with all the usual routine of blisters, black draught, and blue pill to the bargain. The great error of both patient and practitioner, in dyspeptic cases, is to seize upon some of the most prominent features as the cause of all the others. In one instance, they will blame wind; in another, acid. But these, as it happens, instead of being causes, are only the common and coincident effects of a great cerebral weakness; they are not the product, as many imagine, of fermentation of the food-they are morbid secretions from the lining membrane of the alimentary canal. And of this you may be assured, not only by the mode of their production, but by the manner of their cure, when that happens to be accomplished. Just watch a dyspeptic patient when he receives a sudden or unexpected visit; his "heart-burn,” as he calls his acidity, comes on in a moment, and his bowels commence tumbling and tossing about, and will often guggle so audibly, as to make even the bystanders feel sorry for him; showing you clearly that this acidity, as well as the gases so suddenly extricated, are the effects of a weakened nervous system; that they are, in a word, the common effects of wrong secretion.— Now, the term secretion is so constantly associated in the mind of the student with the notion of a liquid, that some of you may not all at once comprehend how gas can be secreted; but, Gentlemen, is not every tissue of the body the result of secretion? are not the hair and the nails as certainly secreted as the saliva or the bile? Only place your naked arm for a few minutes under water, and you find bubbles of air constantly forming upon it; such air being in that case actually secreted before your eyes by the glandular apparatus of the skin! Can you be at any difficulty now, to conceive how flatus is a secretion from the alimentary canal? If a doubt remain, you have only to debilitate the brain of an animal by bleeding him slowly, and his bowels will become full of flatus, even to bursting. Then again, as regards the cure of dyspeptic patients, a drop or two of prussic acid, twice or thrice a-day for a week, or a short course of treatment by quinine, nitrate of silver, or alternations and combinations of these medicines, will often do away for months, and even years, with every symptom of wind and acidity; while cordials, alkalis, and mild laxatives, seldom do more than give a temporary relief!Oh! I never saw much good done by that placebo mode of practice; nor is this at all to be wondered at, if you reflect, that every part of the constitution of a dyspeptic patient is more or less disordered. In every case of this kind there is an unnatural temperature of body; some patients complaining to

you of chills or heats, or alternatious of both in the back, stomach, hands, feet, &c. In these cases, the skin, partially or generally, is either more moist than in health, or it is harsh and dry; perspiring, if at all, with difficulty.In the latter case, some other secretion may be morbidly active. The urine or the bile may be in excess; or the natural fatty or watery deposit of the great cavities of the chest and abdomen, may be in superabundance. The looker-on may even have a false impression of the patient's case and condition, from the increase of either in the minute cells of the investing membrane of the whole cellular substance. Should such a patient complain of being ill, he is sure to be laughed at for his pains-for nobody has any sympathy with him-and this is one of the many cases in the world where “ appearances are deceitful."

The dyspeptic patient is either torpid, and with difficulty roused to exertion, whether corporeal or mental, or he is acted upon by every thing he hears. The last person that speaks to him is the man for him. His spirits are depressed by the merest trifle, and raised again by a straw or a feather. Then, as regards his actions or his promises, you can scarcely depend upon anything he tells you. What he is dying to do to-day, he is miserable till he can again undo to-morrow; he spends his life betwixt acting and regretting; hesitating, hoping, and fearing by turns one moment all confidence, the next all suspicion. Now, is not this one of the strongest of many striking proofs how much our mental workings are the effects of our material state; the result of our brain's condition, and its atomic relations and revolutions? It is in 'perfect accordance with what we observe in all our corporeal motions. If the muscles be tremulous, can you wonder that the mind should be vacillating and capricious? or when these are cramped and spasmodic, why should you be astonished to find a corresponding wrong-headedness, and pertinacious, and perverse adherence to a wrong opinion?-mens sana in corpore sano.— You may argue for hours to no purpose whatever with some patients; for how can you expect the wrong brains of wrong bodies to reason rightly ?— These persons are like the inebriated, who see two candles when there is only one; their perceptions being false, so also are their reasonings. The plunge bath, or a short course of chrono-thermal treatment, will make them alter their minds sooner than the most powerful and persuasive arguments of a Cicero or Demosthenes.

Lady Mary Montague somewhere says, It is the nature of the world to hate truth. She came to this opinion, doubtless, from observing how badly the public had, for the most part, treated its best benefactors. The first discovery of anything useful generally meets with the fate of him who attempts to open the eyes of a person imposed upon-namely, to be called bad names for his pains. How forcibly this reminds us of the jackass that kicked the good-natured man, when trying to relieve the stupid brute from the weight of its panniers!

The pleasure surely is as great,
Of being cheated as to cheat.

The more unscrupulous and unprincipled the impostor, the more certainly he has appeared to fascinate his dupes. Let him only hold out an impossibility to them, and they will dance attendance at his door for months. Taking advantage of a popular but puerile prejudice against mineral medicine, the medical charlatan is very careful to prefix the word vegetable to his nostrum ; and this, he tells the public, is SAFE in every form, dose, and degree, which being in utter repugnance to every other thing in nature, is greedily swallowed by the multitude, as an indisputable truth! Can weight, measure, heat, cold, motion, rest, be so applied to the human body with impunity? Can you without injury cover yourselves with any weight of clothes, or swallow any measure of food? Or can you retain any part of the body in perpetual motion or repose without that part suffering? No, truly! responds the same dyspeptic, who believes that such and such a medicine is safe in every form,

dose, and degree! When treating patients of this class, it is better not to tell them what they are taking; but should they chance to find out that you' have been giving them arsenic, prussic acid, or nitrate of silver, you will be sure to be worried to death by questions, dictated sometimes by their own timidity, and sometimes by the kind feeling of some “damned good-natured friend," secretly set on by some equally damned good-natured apothecary. Now, as these patients are, for the most part, great sticklers for authority, your only course is to tell the truth-which, after all, in nine cases out of ten, will make no impression-and that is the reason why the quack and subordinate practitioner, who can keep their medicines secret, have an advantage over the honourable physician-an advantage so great, that, in a few years, if matters do not take a turn, I doubt if one such will be found practising medicine at all. You may say then what, if it have no effect with patients themselves, will at least appear reasonable to their friends-that the medicines you ordered are all contained in the pharmacopeia of the three colleges of Edinburgh, London, and Dublin, and they are therefore recognised as medicines of value by all the physicians who have a name to make, or a character to lose; that the dose in which you give them is perfectly safe, inasmuch as, if it disagree with their particular constitutions, it will only cause a short temporary inconvenience; and to sum up all, you may quote Shakspeare, who says, and says truly, "In POISON there is PHYSIC." And again:

"Oh! mickle is the powerful grace that lies

In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities!
For not so vile that on the earth doth live,

But to the earth some special good doth give;

Nor aught so good, but, strained from that fair use,

Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse,
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,

And vice sometimes by action dignified.

Within the infant rind of this small flower,
POISON hath residence, and MEDICINE power!"

So that physic and poison, whether vegetable or mineral, are physic or poison according as they are rightly or wrongly applied.

But to return to dyspepsia, or that low fever so termed. In cases of this kind, my practice is to combine the chrono-thermal remedies with what you may call, if you please, symptomatic medicines. For example, where flatulence is the most prominent symptom, I prescribe quinine, hydrocyanic acid, or nitrate of silver, with aniseed or cardamons. In acidity, either of the two first remedies will often answer very well with soda or potash. Where the bowels are slow and torpid, rhubarb, aloes, or both, are very good medicines with which to combine any of the chrono-thermal medicines. In such cases aperient effervescing draughts are also useful. Should the patient complain of muscular or other pains, you may add colchicum or guaiac-and so proceed in a similar manner with other symptomatic remedies for other local indications; keeping in mind, however, that these symptomatic medicines are merely a means of secondary importance in the treatment of a great constitutional totality of derangement. In addition to these measures, plasters to the back or stomach may be very beneficially resorted to in many cases of dyspepsia, and you may also run the changes upon various kinds of baths. The cold plunge and the shower baths are my favourites; though I need not tell you that the feelings of the patient, after he comes out of it, are a better guide to you in your choice and continuation of any bath than all the theories of all the doctors that ever wrote or reasoned upon disease and its treatment. "How do you think me now, doctor?" is a question I am asked every day, and every day I give the same answer: "How do you feel?" If the patient is better, he says so if worse, he will be sure to tell me he is not so well; and according to his answer do I change or continue his physic. Now, whether this be common sense or not, I leave you to judge. Heaven only knows

it is not science, or what very learned people call science; for when the patient says he gets worse and worse every day, science generally tells him to continue his medicine, for that he has not taken enough of it, and that he will be worse before he be better-which I need not tell you is a lie-or more politely to speak, a piece of imposture. Should the patient die, why, then, he dies a natural death, and he has had the first advice, for not only did Mr. So-and-so, the fashionable apothecary, attend him, but Dr. Such-a-one, the great physician, who also called in, and he said all was right, and that nothing better could be done. Had the doctor said all was wrong, he might, perhaps, have been nearer the mark; but, in that case, what apothecary would either call him in again himself, or let him in again, when requested, where he could by a little gentlemanly trickery keep him out? In my own particular case, the custom of the apothecary has been secretly to play upon the fears of the patient or his friends against "strong medicine," to shrug his shoulders and smile contemptuously. "Oh, I can tell you something of Dr. Dickson," he has said, "but you must not give up me as the author;" whereupon he has proceeded to lie Dr. Dickson's life away; and when he had thus, to his own thinking, sufficiently poisoned the ear of his patient, he has turned round in this manner to him" But if you still want a second opinion, why do you not call in Dr. This, or Sir Thingumy T'other-they are leading men, you know!" Now that only means, that the physicians in question are the fashionable puppets whom he, and people like him, call in to conceal their bad work-men who would as soon think of differing with the opinion of their supposed subordinates, but real patrons, as of quarrelling with their breakfast, because it was purchased with the shilling of a dead man's guinea!

"The rich pa

What a just observation was that of the author of Lacon : tient cures the poor physician much more often than the poor physician the rich patient; and it is rather paradoxical, that the rapid recovery of the one usually depends upon the procrastinated disorder of the other. Some persons will tell you with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered, although they were given over; when they might with more reason have said, they recovered, because they were given over." "The great success of quacks in England has been altogether owing to the real quackery of the REGULAR PHYSICIANS." What does that mean? Just this, that the mortality of many legalised practitioners, even of the highest grade, is not one removed above that of the Morisons and St. John Longs, whose dishonest practices they are so constantly decrying! Now, this, you will say, is a startling statement-and much will doubtless depend upon the character of the person making it, whether you treat it with a laugh of contempt, or listen to it with something like respectful attention. Gentlemen, the man who deliberately put that on paper (and I quote him to the letter), was no less a person than Adam Smith, the author of the Wealth of Nations! If such, then, was the certain and settled conviction of that very keen-sighted observer of mankind, will any assertion, any asseveration on the part of individuals interested in declaring the contrary, weigh with you one straw against the evidence of your own senses, when you choose to examine this matter fairly and fully for yourselves? So far as my own experience goes-that is, from what I have seen of the profession in London and the English county towns-eminence in medicine is less a test of talent and integrity than a just reason of suspecting the person who has attained to it, of a complete contempt for both! I say suspecting-for I have met with exceptions, but not many, to the rule. Could you only see as I have seen, the farce of a medical consultation, I think you would agree with me, that the impersonation of physic, like the picture of Garrick, might be best painted with comedy on one side and tragedy on the other. In saying this much, not only have I acted against everything like medical etiquette, but I shall be sure to be roundly abused by the medical profession for it. The truth, however, I maintain it to be, but not the whole

truth! for the world must have its eyes a little more open before it can believe all I happen to know upon the subject. By-and-by I shall tell the English people something will make their ears tingle!

'To return to the consideration of disease. You now see that in all cases of which we have been speaking, the constitution is, for the most part, primarily at fault, and that the names of disorders depend very much upon the greater or less prominence of some particular symptoms, which symptoms, or their shades, may be readily detected in all diseases. With every case of dyspepsia, depression of spirits, and more or less mental caprice, such as hasty or erroneous notions upon one or more points, will be found to be associated. When such depression amounts to despondency, medical men, according to the sex of the patient, change the word DYSPEPSIA into

HYPOCHONDRIA, OR HYSTERIA;

and some professors are very particular in their directions how to distinguish the one from the other! Gentlemen, what is the meaning of Hysteria? It is a corruption of the Greek word voreon (Hysteria, the womb ;) and it was a name given by the ancients to the particular symptoms we are now considering, from a hypothetical idea that in such cases the womb was the principal organ at fault. From the same language we also derive Hypochondria, a compound word formed of uno (Hypo, under,) and yovd20s (Chondros, cartilage,) the supposed seat of the disease being the liver or stomach; which organs are both situated under the cartilaginous portions of the lower ribs. So that when a female suffers from low spirits and despondency, with occasional involuntary fits of laughing, crying, sobbing, or shrieking, you must call her state Hysteria; and when a male is similarly affected, you must say he has Hypochondria. Now it so happens, medical men sometimes pronounce even their male patients to be "hysterical!" And this brings me in mind of an honest Quaker of the profession, who, being very ill, had three doctors to attend him-Mr. Abernethy, Dr. Blundell, and a physician whose name I now forget. Each had his own notion of the disease: the last mentioned, having put a stethoscope to the chest, at once declared the Heart" to be the seat of mischief. Mr. Abernethy, on the contrary, with a sarcastic "pooh, pooh!" muttered something about the "stomach and digestive organs," while Dr. Blundell, in the true spirit of a man-midwife, decided that their patient was only "hysterical." Now the patient, though a Quaker, was a humorist; so he ordered in his will, that when his body should be opened after his death, his Digestive Organs should be presented to Mr. Abernethy, his Heart to his stethoscope physician, and to Dr. Blundell his Womb, if he could find one!

Gentlemen, that the BRAIN is the principal organ implicated in all disorders which come within the physician's province, more especially in such as are termed Hysteria or Hypochondria, the smallest reflection will convince you. Suppose a person of either sex has been accidentally debilitated by loss of blood-a person who previously was strong in nerve as in muscular fibre ; suppose a letter comes with a piece of bad news-the patient, in that case, bursts into tears, laughs and cries time about, and then sinks into a state of dismal and gloomy despondency. And all this, forsooth, you must put down to the state of the womb or digestive apparatus, according to the sex of the patient, instead of placing it to the account of the brain and nerves, without which the ill-timed letter, the cause of all, could not, by any possibility, have affected the mind in the least! Another class of practitioners, scarcely less unreasonable than those to whom we have just alluded, will have it, that patients, coming under the head of hysteria and hypochondria, are not ill at all." Oh! there is nothing the matter with this man," they will say; "he is only hipped!" and if the female, "she is only hysterical." Dr. Radcliffe, when he refused to come to Queen Anne, declared he would not stir a foot,