to many people, sickens some. An odour, in certain cases, may be as good a cordial as wine; every old woman knows the virtue of hartshorn and burnt feathers.

I am almost afraid to speak of TASTE, for, you know, de gustibus non est disputandum. Might not the Red Indian, when taunted for devouring vermin, retort upon the "pale face" for his mite-eating, propensity ? The Esquimaux, who rejects sugar with disgust, esteems train-oil a luxury; but though he prefers a tallow-candle to butter, he has as perfect a taste for whiskey as any Irishman among us; that is, before Father Mathew and temperance societies became the rage. How you would stare if you saw a man in his senses, chewing quick-lime! yet I have seen some hundreds at a time doing that. I allude to the practice of the Asiatics, who first wrap up a little portion of lime in a betel-leaf, and chew both, as our sailors do tobacco. Now, that very tobacco-chewing has always seemed to me an odd taste, and I do not wonder that others, besides fine ladies, have sickened at the sight of a quid. Was there ever such a fancy as that of the Chinese, who eat soup made of birds' nests? Morbid in the first instance, such tastes, like other diseases, spread by imitation or contagion. In the West Indies, the negro is liable to a peculiar fever, called, from the avidity with which he devours clay, Mal d'Estomac. His whole sensations, during this fever, are, doubtless, more or less deranged. What extraordinary likings and longings ladies in the family way occasionally take ! Some will eat cinders, some have a fancy for rats and mice, and some, like Frenchmen, take to frog-eating! I remember reading of a lady who paid fifty pounds for a bite of a handsome young baker's shoulder; the same lady went into hysterics because the poor fellow would not permit her to take another bite, at any price. If you smile and look incredulous at this, how will you receive what I am going to tell you? While I was myself studying at Paris, some twenty years ago, a woman was tried for decapitating a child. When asked her motive for a crime so horrible, she replied, l'envie d'une femme grosse."

Well, now, I think we have had quite enough of tastes. We shall, therefore, say something of TOUCH. You will tell me, perhaps, not to trouble you on that subject; no great good or ill can happen from a touch, you will say. But here you are mistaken: many curious and even dangerous affections may originate in touch simply, provided it be of a novel or unusual kind. Touch the white of the eye, however lightly, with your finger, or a feather, and you shall have pain that may last an hour. The application of either the one or the other to the throat or fauces may vomit you as effectually as tartar emetic or ipecacuan; every nurse knows that. A bristle introduced, in the softest manner, into the nose or ear, has thrown some people into fits. Then what extraordinary effects may sometimes follow the most painless touch of the bladder by a catheter or a bougie! I do not know what other medical men have seen, but I have over and over again witnessed ague, epilepsy, faint, vomit, and diarrhoea, all from the mere introduction of the cathetre or bougie; and I have even traced rheumatism and eruptions to the same operation. You all know the effect of tickling. Now, what is tickling but a succession of short touches? And see how wonderfully it affects most people! you may drive some men mad by it. Though it has been carried so far, in some cases, as to have produced convulsions, and even death itself, Mr. Wardrop actually found it efficacious in some convulsive affections. I have already given you instances where the mere application of a ligature to the arm or leg arrested the fit of mania, epilepsy, &c. Now, the influence of that apparently trifling application depends upon the cerebral attention which it excites through the double influence of sight and touch. As I hinted to you before, the lancet has often got the credit for the good effects produced by the bandage. Fear of the operation may also, on some occasions, have aided its efficacy. How many virtues were, at one time, attributed to a king's touch!-how many more are still believed to attach to the

touch of relics; the bones, rags, and other rattle-traps of saints! Priests and princes, you have by turns governed mankind—justly and well, sometimes— more frequently you have deluded and deceived them. If the credulity and weakness of the masses have, in most cases, been your strength, here at least the dupe has not always been a loser by the deceptions you practised. The emotions of faith and hope, which your mummery inspired, by exciting new revolutions in the matter of the brain, have assuredly alleviated and even cured the sufferings of the sick. Strange infatuation of mankind—with whom, where truth fails, imposture may succeed! In what does the adult differ from the infant-gullible man, who gives his gold for an echo, from the child who caresses its nurse, when telling lies to please it? IGNORANCE in degree makes the only difference. Gentlemen, let us now inquire into the manner in which the human frame may be influenced through the medium of

THE PASSIONS.

What are the passions? Grief, Fear, and Joy-what are these?-Are they entities or actions-the workings of demons within, or corporeal variations caused by impressions from without? Have not the Passions all something in common, certain features or shades of feature so precisely the same as to form a bond of unity by which they may be all linked together? Are not the resemblances, in many instances, so very close that you could not tell one from another? A person is pale in the face, his lip quivers, his whole frame trembles or becomes convulsed. Is this Fear, Rage, Love, or Hate? May it not be the effect of a change of temperature simply? Bailly, when on the scaffold, was taunted by the bystanders for trembling. Yes," he replied; but it is with Cold." "You are pale, Sir, your Fear betrays you." "If I am pale, it is with Astonishment at being accused of such a crime!" "You blush, Madam, you are Ashamed of yourself." Pardon me, Sir, it is your Audacity brings the redness of Rage to my cheek." You see, then, how like the Passions are to each other, and how difficult it is to guess at the causes of them from mere appearance.

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Like the various diseases of which we have had occasion to speak, the Mental Emotions, or rather the corporeal actions so called-have all been associated with particular organs and secretions. Their very names have changed with the changes in medical doctrine. Who among you would dream of placing Grief in the liver? That the ancients did so, is evident by the name they gave it-Melancholy literally signifies "black-bile.” Envy or Spite we still call the "Spleen," and when a person is enraged, we say "his bile is up." Europeans place Courage, Benevolence, and Fear in the Heart, the Heart which has enough to do in the performance of its own proper office, namely, that of a vessel to circulate the blood through the system!-The Persians and Arabs associate Fear, Courage, and Benevolence with the liver: "White-liver" is their term for a coward. Shakspeare uses the word lily-livered in the same sense.

People often speak of "Temperament," and professors of philosophy tell us there are four kinds. If a man is hasty or violent, his temperament is said to be Choleric or bilious; if mentally depressed, Melancholic or blackbilious; if of a joyful and happy turn of mind, he is of a Sanguineous of fullblooded temperament; if apathetic or listless, the temperament is Phlegmatic-a word somewhat difficult to translate, inasmuch as it originated in a fanciful phantom, which the ancients believed to be an element of the body, and which they termed "phlegm." Some add another temperament, which they call Leuco-phlegmatic, or white phlegm! I wonder they never took the Saliva to distinguish a temperament; surely the "Salivous temperament" would be quite as rational as the "Bilious." What, then, are all these Temperaments-so far, at least, as their nomenclature goes, but pretty gibberish ?-mere sounds invented by Pedantry to gull Folly; or, in the words of Horne Tooke," an exemplar of the subtle art of saving appearances,

and of discoursing deeply and learnedly on a subject with which we are perfectly unacquainted!" It never occurred to the sophists of the schools that man's mental dispositions, like his corporeal attributes, are every day altered by time and circumstance. Need I tell you, that disease has made the bravest man quake at his own shadow, and turned the most joyous person into a moody and moping wretch? When the doctrines of the Humoral School prevailed, the word Temperament gave way to humour, and good and bad humour took the place of cheerful and sulky temper. We are in the daily habit of speaking of "the spirits." We say "low spirits," and "high spirits" which forms of expression may be traced to the period when physicians were so ignorant as to suppose that the arteries, instead of carrying blood, contained air or "spirits," from Spiritus, the Latin for breath or air. That was the reason why these blood-vessels were first called aer-teries. This confusion which pervades all language has materially impeded our knowledge both of the physical and the moral man. Locke must have felt this when he said, "Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science, and hard or misapplied words, with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance and hindrances of true knowledge."

"We cannot entertain a doubt," says Sir H. Davy, "but that every change in our sensations and ideas must be accompanied with some corresponding change in the organic matter of the body." Through the medium of one or more of the five senses must some external circumstance first operate on that part of it called the BRAIN, so as to change the existing relations and revolutions of its atoms, before there can be what we term a Passion. Whatever alters the cerebral atoms must alter the actions of every part of the bodysome more, some less. According to the prominence and locality of one set of actions or another, do we, for the most part, name the Passion. The jest that will make one man laugh, may enrage another. What are the features common to all Passion ?-Tremor, change of temperature, change of secretion. Do not these constitute an Ague-fit? Shakspeare, with his accustomed penetration, speaks of "this ague-fit of Fear," and he stretched the analogy even to the world around him :

"Some say the EARTH was fever'd and did shake."

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Hate, Love, and Anger are equally remarkable for their ague-like changes. You remember what Hudibras says of Love-that it is only an ague-fit reversed." The same may be said of Hope, Joy, and Rage; for in all these Passions the "hot fit takes the patient first." Such at least is their general effect; but in particular instances, as in the real Ague, coldness and pallor usher in every one of those passionate fits. I care not what be the nature of the Passion-joy, grief, or fear-the constitutional circle of actions is still the same; differing, where they do differ, in shade, place, and prominence solely-but in no greater degree than one Fever differs from another. Moreover, there is no constitutional affection which these Passions may not excite or cure. In this respect, also, they resemble the Ague, that type of every disturbed state, whether of man the microcosm, or the globe he inhabits. We have already, to a certain extent, demonstrated the influence of particular Passions in the production of certain diseases. We have further proved that the same morbid actions which we recognise under so many different names, when arising from a blow or a poison, may be equally the result of a mental impression: we have established their absolute identity by curing them with the same physical agents. The history of medicine, on the other hand, presents us with innumerable instances of the beneficial agency of these very Passions in every kind of disorder, whatever may have been the nature of the primary cause. Faith, Confidence, Enthusiasm, Hope,-or rather the various Causes which produce them,―are as powerful agents in the cure of

the sick as any remedies we possess. Not only, like Bark, or Wine, do they often give rise to a salutary Excitement, or mild Fever, sufficient to prevent the access of the most malignant diseases-but, like these agents, they have actually arrested and cured such diseases after they had fairly and fully commenced. A stone, a ring, with a history real or supposed; a verse of the Koran or the Bible sewn in a piece of silk-these worn, now on one part of the body, now on another, have inspired a mental firmness and induced a corporeal steadiness which have enabled the wearer to defy the united influence of Epidemic and Contagion. If the Arabs have still their talismans, and the Indians their amulets, the Western nations have not ceased to vaunt the cures and other miracles effected by their relics, their holy wells, and holy water. When we boast of the success of a particular measure, we say it acted like a Charm. What is a charm ?-whence its origin? It is a corruption of the Latin word Carmen, a Song or Verse. In all times and in all countries, there have been men who have found their advantage in playing upon the ignorance of their fellow-men; he that would appear wiser than another has always had recourse to some kind of imposture; and as priest, poet, prophet, and physician were often united in one person, it was not wonderful that such person should clothe his mummery and mysticism in verse. To be able to read or spell was, at one time, a mark of superior wisdom, and he who could do so, had only to mutter his "spell" to cure or kill. From the earliest antiquity, we find charms a part of medical practice; Homer, in his Odyssey, introduces the sons of Autolycus charming to stanch blood; the physicians of Egypt and India are to this day charmers; the north men composed Rhunic rhymes to charm away disease. Indeed, with the Norwegians and Icelanders verse or song was supposed to be all-powerful; one of their poets thus expresses the belief of his time and country in this respect: "I know a song by which I can soften and Enchant the arms of my enemies, and render their weapons harmless. I know a song which I need only to sing when men have loaded me with bonds; for the moment I sing it my chains fall in pieces, and I walk forward at liberty. I know a song useful to all the children of men; for as soon as hatred inflames them I sing it, and their hate ceases. I know a song of such virtue, that I can hush the winds with it, and subdue the storm to a breath."

Such, Gentlemen, was the origin of Enchantment, or Incantation, terms borrowed from the Latin verb Canto, I sing. With the Jews, the simple enunciation of their mystical word Abracalan, was sufficient to inspire the confidence that baffled disease; nay, Quintus Severinus Samonicus vaunted his success in the cure of the hemitritic or double. tertian fever, by pronouncing mysteriously the word Abracadabra, a phonic combination of his own invention! At this very hour, the Caffre rain-maker, the Cingalese devil-dancer, and the Copper Indian sorcerer, with their charms and chants, are enabled to work changes in the bodies of their several countrymen that put the boasted science of the schoolmen to shame. That these act by inspiring Confidence simply, may be seen from what took place in 1625, at the siege of Breda. "That city from a long siege, suffered all the miseries that fatigue, bad provisions, and distress of mind could bring upon its inhabitants. Among other misfortunes, the scurvy made its appearance, and carried off great numbers. This, added to other calamities, induced the garrison to incline towards a surrender of the place, when the Prince of Orange, anxious to prevent its loss, and unable to relieve the garrison, contrived, however, to introduce letters to the men promising them the most speedy assistance. These were accompanied with medicines against the scurvy said to be of great price, but of still greater efficacy; many more were to be sent to them. The effects of the deceit were truly astonishing. Three small vials of medicine were given to each physician. It was publicly given out that three or four drops were sufficient to impart a healing virtue to a GALLON of water. [Mark this, Homœopathists!] We now displayed our wonder working balsams. Not even were the commanders let into the secret of the cheat upon the soldiers. They

flocked in crowds about us, every one soliciting that part may be reserved for his use. Cheerfulness again appears in every countenance, and an universal faith prevails in the sovereign virtues of the remedies. The effect of this delusion was truly astonishing; for many were quickly and perfectly recovered. Such as had not moved their limbs for a month before, were seen walking the streets with their limbs sound, straight, and whole! They boasted of their cure by the Prince's remedy."-[Ives' Journal.] And what was this remedy?- —a mere sham medicine, Gentlemen! After this, do I require to caution you, when you visit your patients, not to put on a lugubrious or desponding look before them? Such conduct, on the part of a medical man, is unpardonable; yet there are practitioners so base and sordid as to make it a part of their policy to represent the malady of every patient as dangerous. These find their profit in croaking; for it is a course of conduct that almost infallibly contributes to keep up disease. To God and their consciences I leave these men.

Such of you as might be disposed to question the depressing influence of a long face upon the sick, may read the history of Lord Anson's voyages with profit. There you will find it recorded, "that whatever discouraged the seamen, or at any time damped their hopes, never failed to add new vigour to the distemper, (the Scurvy,) for it usually killed those who were in the last stages of it, and confined those to their hammocks who were before capable of some kind of duty." And this is in perfect accordance with the observation of Solomon, that "a merry heart doeth good like medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones."

Let me, therefore, counsel you not only to assume a cheerful look in the presence of the sick, but endeavour at the same time'

To render with your precepts less

The sum of human wretchedness,

And STRENGTHEN man with HIS OWN MIND.

What are all your trumpery Pathology and Dissecting-Room knowledge compared with this? You may dissect dead bodies for twenty years, and never be one whit the wiser on the mode of influencing the motions of the living. Now, this brings to my mind certain lines of a cotemporary poet, the celebrated Beranger; but as some of you may not understand the French language, I shall offer no apology for giving his sentiments in my own not over poetical English: :

Was ever such an ass as that

Who hoped, by slicing mutton-fat,

And pulling candle-wicks to pieces,

To tell why Light should spring from Greases?

Yes, one-that still more precious fool,

Who in the anatomic school

Expected with dissecting knife

To learn from DEATH the laws of LIFE!

Ha ha! when sick myself, I'd rather

From some old nurse a "wrinkle " gather,
Than trust to such pedantic pate

To cure my frame's disordered state!

But, seriously, Gentlemen, I have known a great many first-rate anatomists in my time; yet there are old women who never saw the inside of a dead body, whom I would sooner consult in my own case than any of these hairsplitting gentry. These men are mere geographers, who will point out rivers and towns, if I may say so,-corporeal hills, and dales and plains,-but who know nothing of the manners, customs, or mode of influencing the animated atoms constantly entering into and departing from them. If any such mechanical-minded creature presume hereafter to mystify you on this point, tell him to watch the wounded of contending armies; and ask him to explain to you why the same description of injuries which heal with rapidity when oc