SKETCH OF DR. DICKSON. SAMUEL DICKSON was born at Edinburgh, on the 26th of April, 1802. He was the eldest of five children, and, like his father, was bred to the law. But, being of a philosophic and inquiring turn, he took an early disgust to this profession, and, for tunately for mankind, he chose medicine as the field of his future studies. In 1825, he got his diploma from the Edinburgh College of Surgeons; and carried off the gold medal for the best essay on the "Food of Plants," at the university of that city. After studying a few months in Paris, he obtained his commission as a medical officer in the army, in which capacity he served with distinction both at home and abroad, particularly in India, where he had an opportunity of making himself well acquainted with tropical diseases. On his return, he published his work on the diseases of India. In 1832, he married "the beauty of Edinburgh," Miss Eliza Johnston, daughter of David Johnston, Esq., of Overton, and neice of Lord Campbell, formerly Lord High Chancellor of Ireland. Soon after, he took his degree of M. D. at Glasgow, and, in 1833, he left the army and settled in Cheltenham. For the first two years his success was unprecedented. In that short period, he prescribed for upwards of 7000 patients. His door became literally besieged; and this, as a matter of course, drew down upon him the malice of the profession. But "water rises by pressure,' ," and, in the end, true courage, true genius, and true worth, will do the same. In 1836, undaunted by the wicked machinations of his professional enemies, he published the secret of his amazing popularity, his first sketch of the Chrono-Thermal system of medicine, under the bold and fearless title of "The Fallacy of the Art of Physic as taught in the schools, with new and important principles of practice," which certainly proposed a complete revolution in medical theory and practice. In 1838, he again brought out his new doctrine in "The Unity of Disease." In 1839, he left Cheltenham for London, having received a piece of plate of fifty guineas' value, as a testimony to his merits, from the people of the former town. In 1840, he delivered his lectures on the "Fallacies of the Faculty, and the ChronoThermal System of Medicine,"-a system which the profession, with a few honorable exceptions, did their utmost to crush; but, failing in the attempt, they have been since, in consequence, compelled to modify their practice according to the precepts of the great master; thus giving a practical, and therefore the best possible testimony to the accuracy of his system. Dr. Dickson is of middle stature, dark hair, and penetrating eyes. His features are peculiarly expressive, and strongly indicative of great powers of perception and concentration, united with firmness and determination. His habits are quiet and unobtrusive, his manners courteous and unassuming. His temper is quick, but "He carries anger as the flint bears fire, Which, much enforced, yields a hasty spark, Some of his professional enemies, by purloining his ideas, (and language, too,) have basely endeavored to rob him of that merit to which he is entitled; others have insidiously tried to damn his reputation, but he has made their evil efforts recoil upon themselves. He has slain every serpent that has crossed his path, so that those who offer him the first blow must be prepared to receive the last. Notwithstanding this, he is open-hearted and generous, ever ready with his services, and was never known to take a fee from any one to whom he thought that fee would be an objectHis practice in Cheltenham and the surrounding neighborhood was alike extensive and successful, and for some time prior to his departure for London, the number of patients who sought and received relief at his hands could not be less than one m dred a-day! His praise was the theme of every tongue, while diseases, hitherto deemed incurable, vanished before the magic of his Chrono-Thermal wand. In London his success has been equally signal. How far he may have profited by his wife's relationship to a Minister of the Crown, we have not the means of knowing, but his enemies are wrong when they pretend that he owes all to that quarter. Dr. Dickson had a great reputation before he married the niece of Lord Campbell, UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA THE CHRONO-THERMAL SYSTEM OF MEDICINE. LECTURE I. INTRODUCTION-PHENOMENA GENTLEMEN, OF HEALTH AND SLEEP-DISEASE AND ITS TYPE-CAUSES. We daily hear of the march of intellect, of the progress or perfection of many branches of science. Has MEDICINE kept pace with the other arts of life-has it fallen short or excelled them in the rivalry of improvement? Satisfactorily to solve this question, we must look a little deeper than the surface-for TRUTH, as the ancients said, lies in a WELL, meaning thereby that few people are deep-sighted enough to find it out. In the case of Medicine, we must neither be mystified by the boasting assertions of disingenuous teachers, nor suffer ourselves to be misled by the medical press; the conductors of which, for the most part, are the mere hirelings of party, their principal business being to crush and cry down such truths or discoveries as may chance to militate against the interests of the schools and coteries they are employed to serve. The late Sir William Knighton was at the head of his profession; he was, moreover, physician to George the Fourth. Joining, as he did, much worldly wisdom and sagacity to a competent knowledge of the medical science of his age, his opinion of the state of our art in these days may be worth your knowing; more especially as it was given in private, and at a time when he had ceased to be pecuniarily interested in its practice. In a letter to a friend, published after his death, he thus delivers himself:- "It is somewhat strange that, though in many arts and sciences improvement has advanced in a step of regular progression from the first, in others it has kept no pace with time; and we look back to ancient excellence with wonder not unmixed with awe. Medicine seems to be one of those ill-fated arts, whose improvement bears no proportion to its antiquity. This is lamentably true, although Anatomy has been better illustrated, the Materia Medica enlarged, and Chemistry better understood." Dr. James Gregory, a man accomplished in all the science and literature of his time, was for many years the leading physician of Edinburgh; but he nevertheless held his profession in contempt. On visiting London, he had an opportunity of being introduced to his equally celebrated countryman Baillie. Curious to know Gregory's opinion of the man who then swayed the medical sceptre of the metropolis, his friends asked him what he thought of Baillie. RO VIMU "Baillie," he replied, "knows nothing but Physic;" in revenge for which, Baillie afterwards wittily rejoined, "Gregory knows everything but Physic." But what was Dr. Baillie's own opinion of his art, after all? I do not allude to his language during the many years he was in full practice; then, doubtless, with the multitude who thronged his door, he really believed he knew a great deal; but what did he say when he retired from his profession, and settled at his country-seat in Gloucestershire? Then, gentlemen, without the slightest hesitation, he declared he had no faith in Physic whatever! But, you must not from this imagine that the fortunate doctor intended to say that the world had all along been dreaming when it believed Opium could produce sleep, Mercury salivate, and Rhubarb purge. No such thing: he only confessed that he knew nothing of the manner of action of these substances on the body, nor the principle upon which they should be used. Now, what would you think of a sailor who had expressed himself in the same way, in regard to the rudder and compass,-who had told you that he had no faith in either instrument as a guide to steer a vessel by? Why, certainly, that he knew nothing of the profession by which he gained his living. And such really was Dr. Baillie's case. The great bulk of mankind measure the professional abilities of individuals solely by their degree of reputation-forgetting Shakspeare's remark, that a name is very often got without merit and lost without a fault. That Baillie actually attained to the eminence he did, without any very great desert of his, what better proof than his own declaration ?-a declaration which fully bears out what Johnson tells us in his life of Akenside :--"A physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune: his degree of reputation is for the most part totally casual; they that employ him know not his excellence-they that reject him know not his deficiency." But still, some of you may very naturally ask, How could Dr. Baillie, in such a blissful state of ignorance or uncertainty, contrive to preserve for so long a period his high position with the professional public? This I take to be the true answer:-The medical art, like every other art, must have had its infancy-a period when, knowing nothing, its professors may fairly be excused for believing anything. When Baillie began practice, the profession were slowly and timidly groping their way in the gloom: a few practical points they of course knew; but of the true principle of the application of those points, they were, as I shall afterwards show you, entirely ignorant. Most of them were, therefore, very ready to follow any one of their own number who should most lustily cry out, EUREKA-I HAVE FOUND IT! In the dark we mistake a pigmy for a giant, the more especially if he talks grandiloquently. That was what Dr. Baillie did. At the commencement of his career, few medical men opened the bodies of their dead patients; for Sydenham, the English Hippocrates, had long before ridiculed the practice. It was, therefore, all but in disuse, and all but forgotten, when Dr. Baillie published his book on Morbid Anatomy, —a book wherein, with a praiseworthy minuteness and assiduity, he detailed a great many of the curious appearances so usually found in the dissection of dead bodies. Had he stopped here, Dr. Baillie would have done Medicine some little service; but by doing more he accomplished less-more for himself, less for the public; for by further teaching that the only way to learn the cure of the living is to dissect the bodies of the dead, he put the profession on a wrong path, -one from which it will be long before the unthinking majority can in all likelihood be easily reclaimed. In the earlier part of his career, Dr. Baillie, it is only fair to suppose, believed what he wrote, though by his after declaration, he admitted himself wrong. His arguments, nevertheless, succeeded but too well with the profession; proving the truth of Savage Landor's observation, that "in the intellectual as in the physical, men grasp you firmly and tenaciously by the hand, creeping close at your side, step by step, while you lead them into darkness, but when you lead them into sudden light, they start and quit you!" To impose upon the world is to secure your fortune; to tell it a truth it did not know before, is to make your ruin equally sure. How was the exposition of the Circulation of the Blood first received? Harvey, its discoverer, was persecuted through life; his enemies in derision styled him the Circulator,-a word in its original Latin signifying vagabond or quack; and their efforts to destroy him were so far successful, that he lost the greater part of his practice through their united machinations. "Morbi non eloquentia sed remediis curantur" is an observation some of you may have met in Celsus, which, if you will allow me, I will translate-Diseases are cured by Remedies, not by Wrangling. Yet, strange to say, the generality of great professors who have successively obtained the public ear since the time of the Roman physician, have been almost all as remarkable for their love of disputation as they have been inveterate against every thing savouring of innovation in the shape of remedies. When a limb is amputated, to prevent the patient bleeding to death, you tie the arteries. Before the time of Francis the First, surgeons followed another fashion they staunched the blood by the application of boiling pitch to the surface of the stump. Ambrose Baré, principal surgeon to that king, introduced the ligature as a substitute-he first tied the arteries. Mark the reward of Ambrose Paré: he was hooted and howled down by the Faculty of Physic, who ridiculed the idea of hanging human life upon a thread, when boiling pitch had stood the test of centuries. In vain he pleaded the agony of the old application; in vain he showed the success of the ligature. Corporations, colleges, or coteries of whatsoever kind, seldom forgive merit in an adversary; they continued to persecute him with the most remorseless rancour: but Paré had a spirit to despise and a master to protect him against all the efforts of their malice. What physician now-a-days would dispute the value of antimony as a medicine? No one with a grain of sense in his head. Yet, when first introduced, its employment was voted a crime. Perhaps there was a reason! Oh, certainly! it was introduced by Paracelsus-Paracelsus, the arch-enemy of the established practice. At the instigation of the college, the French parliament accordingly passed an act making it penal to prescribe antimony. To the Jesuits of Peru, Protestant England owes the invaluable bark; how did Protestant England first receive this gift of the Jesuits? Being a popish remedy, they at once rejected the drug as the invention of the father of all papists-the devil. For the same reason, possibly, the physicians of Frederick the Great dissuaded him from trying it to cure his ague: luckily for the King, he laughed at their advice, took bark, and got well. In 1693, Dr. Groenvelt discovered the curative power of Cantharides in dropsy; what an excellent thing for Dr. Groenvelt!-Excellent indeed for no sooner did his cures begin to make a noise than he was at once committed to Newgate, by warrant of the president of the College of Physicians, for prescribing cantharides internally. Blush! most sapient College of Physicians-your late president, Sir Henry Halford, was a humble imitator of the ruined Groenvelt! Before the discovery of vaccination, Inoculation for Small Pox was found greatly to mitigate that terrible disease. Who first introduced small pox inoculation? Lady Mary Montague, who had seen its success in Turkey. Happy Lady Mary Montague! Rank, sex, beauty, genius-these all doubtless conspired to bring the practice into notice. Listen to Lord Wharncliffe, who has written her life, and learn from his story this terrible truth-that persecution ever has been, and ever will be, the only reward of the benefactors of the human race. Lady Mary," says his Lordship, "protested that in the four or five years immediately succeeding her arrival at home, she seldom passed a day without repenting of her patriotic undertaking; and she vowed she never would have attempted it if she had foreseen the vexation, the persecution, and even the obloquy it brought upon her. The clamours raised against the practice, and of course against her, were beyond belief. The faculty all rose in arms to a man, foretelling failure and the most disastrous consequences; the clergy 66 descanted from their pulpits on the impiety of thus seeking to take events out of the hands of Providence; and the common people were taught to hoot at her as an unnatural mother who had risked the lives of her own children. We now read in grave medical biography, that the discovery was instantly hailed, and the method adopted by the principal members of that profession. Very likely they left this recorded; for whenever an invention or a project-and the same may be said of persons-has made its way so well by itself as to establish a certain reputation, most people are sure to find out that they always patronised it from the beginning, and a happy gift of forgetfulness enables many to believe their own assertion. But what said Lady Mary of the actual fact and actual time? Why, that the four great physicians deputed by government to watch the progress of her daughter's inoculation, betrayed not only such incredulity as to its success, but such an unwillingness to have it succeed-such an evident spirit of rancour and malignity, that she never cared to leave the child alone with them one second, lest it should in some secret way suffer from their interference." Gentlemen, how was the still greater discovery of the immortal Jenner received-Vaccination? Like every other discovery-with ridicule and contempt. By the Royal College of Physicians, not only was Jenner persecuted and oppressed; but long even after the benefits which his practice had conferred upon mankind had been universally admitted, the pedants of that most pedantic of bodies refused to give him their license to practise his profession in London; because, with a proper feeling of self-respect, he declined to undergo at their hands an examination in Greek and Latin. The qualifications of the schoolmaster, not the attainments of the physician; the locality of study, rather than the extent of information possessed by the candidate, were, till very lately, the indispensable preliminaries to the honours of the College. Public opinion has since forced this corporation to a more liberal course. But, to return to Jenner: Even religion and the Bible were made engines of attack against him. From these Errhman of Frankfort deduced his chief grounds of accusation against the new practice; and he gravely attempted to prove, from quotations of the prophetical parts of Scripture, and the writings of the fathers of the church, that Vaccination was the real Antichrist! From all this you perceive that mankind have not very greatly changed since the time of Solomon, who, after searching the world, "returned and saw under the sun, that there was neither bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favour to men of skill." Gentlemen, the ancients endeavoured to elevate physic to the dignity of a science, but failed. The moderns, with more success, have endeavoured to reduce it to the level of a trade. Till the emoluments of those who chiefly practise it cease to depend upon the quantity of useless drugs they mercilessly inflict upon their deluded patients-till surgeons shall be other than mechanics, and physicians something more than mere puppets of the apothecary; till the terrible system of collusion, which at present prevails under the name of a "good understanding among the different branches of the profession" be exposed, the medical art must continue to be a source of destruction to the many-a butt for the ridicule of the discerning few. The Wits of every age and country have amused themselves at the expense of the physician; against his science they have directed all the shafts of their satire; and in the numerous inconsistencies and contradictions of its professors they have found matter for some of their richest scenes. Molière, so long the terror of the apothecaries of Paris, makes one of his dramatis persone say to another "Call in a doctor, and if you do not like his physic, I'll soon find you another who will condemn it." Rousseau showed his distrust of the entire faculty when he said, "Science which instructs and physic which cures us, are excellent, certainly; but science which misleads and physic which destroys us, are equally execrable; teach us how to distinguish them." Quite as sceptical as to its use, and rather more sarcastic in his satire of the profes |