enter more or less largely into the economy of their own living frames! To sum up the whole, every vegetable substance is the product of the earth: and if there be truth in Scripture-if there be a statement in the sacred writings more deserving of the attention of the physician than another, it is that contained in the 38th chapter of the Book of Ecclesiasticus, namely, that “ The Lord hath created medicines out of the EARTH, and he that is wise will not abhor them!" Can the man be a Christian who, after this, would dare to rave against mineral remedies?

As now practised in England, MEDICINE is little better than a copy of the exploded NAVIGATION of the ancients. Taking his bearings, less by the observation of the fixed stars, than by every little eminence and prominent locality, the ancient mariner, cautiously, if not timidly, crept along shore. With the unerring compass for his guide, the seaman now steers his bark boldly upon the boundless ocean. Despising the localisms that formerly guided his sail, he now completes his voyage to the distant port in as many days as it formerly occupied him weeks or months. Keeping in view the principles here laid down, the physician may, in like manner, with a few rare exceptions, entirely dispense with the common anatomical landmarks of his art-if he be not startled with the novelty of the light by which we have endeavoured to dispel the darkness that has hitherto clouded the field of medicine. Taking corporeal Unity and Totality for his rudder and compass-the Brain and Nerves for the Ocean and Seas on which he is to act-Temperature and Remittency for his Tide and Season-constitution and habit for the rule by which he must occasionally change his tack-he may now rapidly accomplish ends which, by groping among the intricacies of nomenclature, or by a vulgar attention to mere localities, he can only imperfectly attain by the reiteration of long and painful processes; he may thus, with ease, obviate difficulties which he previously believed to be insurmountable. Let him not question whether or not the adoption of this will best serve his own interest. As physic is for the public, not the public for physic, he may rely with certainty, that notwithstanding the present over-crowded state of the profession, the supply of medical aid will, sooner or later, adjust itself to his own, as well as to the general weal.

It was one of the boasts of the eccentric Radcliffe, that he could write the practice of physic on half a sheet of paper: the whole might be comprised in half a line-ATTENTION TO TEMPERATURE! This, you may be sure, was Radcliffe's chief secret-for he was one of the earliest physicians who first introduced what is called the cooling system in fever. When the Duke of Beaufort was taken ill of the small-pox, "the doctor," says Pottis, “was sent for, and found his grace's windows shut up in such a manner, by the old lady duchess, his grandmother's order, that not a breath of air could come into the room, which almost deprived the duke of the very means of respiration. This method had been observed by the physicians (!) in her grace's youthful days, and this she was resolved to abide by, as the most proper in this conjuncture, being fearful that her grandson might otherwise catch cold, and, by means of it, lose a life that was so precious to her and the whole nation. She had also taken a resolution to give her attendance upon the duke in person during his sickness, and was in the most violent consternation when Radcliffe at his first visit ordered the curtains of the bed to be drawn open, and the light to be let in, as usual, into his bed-room. How,' said the duchess, have you a mind to kill my grandson ?-Is this the tenderness and affection you have always expressed for his person?'tis most certain his grandfather and I were treated after another manner, nor shall he be treated otherwise than we were, since we recovered [escaped, truly!] and lived to a great age without any such dangerous experiments! • All this may be,' replied the doctor, with his wonted plainness and sincerity, but I must be free with your grace, and tell you, that unless you will give me your word that you'll instantly go home to Chelsea and leave the duke wholly to my care, I shall

not stir one foot for him; which, if you will do, without intermeddling with your unnecessary advice, my life for his, that he never miscarries, but will be at liberty to pay you a visit in a month's time.' When at last, with abundance of difficulty, that great lady was persuaded to acquiesce and give way to the entreaties of the duke and other noble relations, and had the satisfaction to see her grandson, in the time limited, restored to perfect health, she had such an implicit belief of the doctor's skill afterwards, that though she was in the eighty-fifth year of her age at that very time, she declared, it was her opinion that she would never die while he lived, it being in his -power to give length to her days by his never-failing medicines."

Well, Gentlemen, the proper medical treatment of ALL DISEASES comes, at last, to attention to Temperature, and to nothing more. What is the proper practice in Intermittent Fever? To reverse the Cold stage, either by the sudden shock of the cold dash, or by the administration of warming cordials; in the Hot, to reduce the amount of Temperature, by cold affusion and fresh air; or, for the same purpose, to exhibit, according to circumstances, an emetic, a purgative, or both in combination. With quinine, arsenic, opium, &c., the interval of comparative health-the period of medium temperature, may be prolonged to an indefinite period; and in that manner may HEALTH become established in all diseases-whether, from some special local development, the disorder be denominated mania, epilepsy, croup, cynanche, the gout, the influenza! In the early stages of disease, to arrest the FEVER is, in most instances, sufficient for the reduction of every kind of local development. A few rare cases excepted, it is only when the disorder has been of long standing and habitual, that the physician will be compelled to call to his aid the various local measures, which have a relation to the greater or less amount of the temperature of particular parts.

The Unity of Disease was first promulgated by Hippocrates, and for centuries it was the ancient belief. In modern times it found an advocate in the American physician Rush-but except in this instance of unity, betwixt the respective doctrines of both authors and my doctrines of disease there is not a single feature in common. For, while the first, from his observation of the resemblance of disorders one to another, inferred that one imaginary humour must be the cause of all complaints-the doctrine of the second was that all disorders consisted in one kind of excitement. The principle of Hippocrates led him to purge and sweat ;--that of Rush, to bleed, leech, and starve. In practice and in theory I am equally opposed to both. Other physicians, doubtless, have held the idea of a unity of disease, but neither in the true theory of the nature of morbid action, nor in the principle of the practical application of medical resources, have I as yet found the Chrono-Thermal System anticipated. The opponents of my doctrines, and those who embrace them by stealth, have alike searched the writings of the ancients in vain to discover a similarity to them in either respect. If it be urged against the author of the Chrono-Thermal System of Medicine, that he has availed himself of facts collected by others—and that, therefore, all is not his which his System contains-I answer, Facts when disjointed are the mere bricks or materials with which the builders of all systems must work. And to deny to any man the merit of being the architect of a great Edifice of Truth on that account, would be just as reasonable as to ascribe the merit of St. Paul's Cathedral to the donkeys and other beasts of burden Sir Christopher Wren necessarily employed in fetching the marble and mortar composing it. "Merely to collect facts is an easy and mindless task, that any common being can perform; it requires eyes and hands, and almost dispenses with a brain; it is the work of a toiling wretch, who, like the miser, it incapable of using what he possesses. Mere facts lie around even the savage, but he knows not what he sees-and such, precisely such, is the case with the mere learners of the names of things, the collectors of little facts, the undiscriminating triflers, who think they are cultivating the sciences."-[Alexander Walker.] It is of

these, nevertheless, that our medical clubs and coteries are chiefly composed, and it is with the conglomerating effusions of these that the editors of the medical press chiefly contrive to keep the daylight of medical truth from the eyes of the student. Microscopical observations, straw-splittings, and other little facts you have from their hands in abundance--but facts properly arranged and systematised into a whole or great fact, not only do you never find in their writings-but when you present such great facts to their eyes, they either comprehend them not, or if they do, they immediately endeavour to stifle or steal the discovery. Out upon such contemptible creatures, fit only to

Suckle fools, and chronicle small beer!

How was the Chrono-Thermal System at first received by medical men? I speak not of its reception by the canaille of the profession-the twaddling, intriguing sycophants of country towns-I mean its reception by the medical aristocracy," as the Court doctors call themselves. Immediately after its publication, one of these court gentry (James Johnson) misrepresented, ridiculed, and denied it-three years after that, another court physician (Holland) attempted, as you have seen, by a sidewind to steal it-three years more passed away, and a third court creature (Forbes) by those meanest arts, misstatement and misquotation, first did his little endeavour to stifle it, and, finding he could not succeed in that, did what he could to give it to others. If such was the candid and gentleman-like conduct of the town doctors, what had the Chrono-Thermal System of Medicine to expect at the hands of the physic-selling profession in the country? What could these intriguing little gossips do but follow in the wake of their town masters, the court physicians? Now they ridiculed it-now they denied it; but all the while they had no hesitation to practise it by stealth, some in one, some in another of its fragments. This moment it was partially true, but not new; the next, the newness was admitted, the truth denied. But, Gentlemen, up to 1836, when I first published the heads of that system, the profession to a man were utterly ignorant of the very nature of disease. Its periodicity in the case of ague, and a few other disorders, they knew-the periodicity of all animai movement, whether in health or disease, they knew nothing at all aboutand of the mode in which remedies act they were just as ignorant. As to blood-letting, which the great majority of them now admit they did carry too far, the exclusion of it from the chrono-thermal system, so far from being its principal feature, as some of them pretend, is only a fragmental part that of necessity followed its discovery. I have never taken credit for being the first opponent of the lancet. But one thing in regard to this matter I do claim credit for I claim credit for being the first man who, by a strong array of facts, and some force of reasoning, produced an impression on the public that all the facts and all the arguments of former opponents of the lancet never before produced on the Profession-namely, an impression of the dangerous nature of the remedy; and whether they like to be told of it or not, I claim to have either convinced or compelled the profession materially to alter their practice. How amusing to see the manner in which those who formerly advocated the lancet in Apoplexy, now endeavour to get out of their difficulty! Sir C. Bell, Clutterbuck, Marshall Hall, Wardrop, &c., in recent remarks upon its treatment, give so many doubts, cautions, and reservations as all but to amount to a complete prohibition of the lancet in this disease-not one of them, however, having the boldness to oppose it entirely in direct words, or virtue enough to acknowledge to whom he owes the new light that has so lately come upon him in this matter. "Awful is the duel between MAN and the AGE in which he lives !"--Bulwer. In all the late medical reviews of my writings, the subject of blood-letting, which afforded so much mirth to my early critics, has either been kept entirely in the back-ground, or, if noticed at all, my strictures on it are declared to be a mere echo of the present opinions of the profession! but whether they be so or not, the astute editors of

these publications determine that no merit attaches to me for my endeavours to put it down, inasmuch as it had been equally opposed and decried by somebody of some place or another in Greece, who lived before the time of the Messiah! Gentlemen, to Say blood-letting is a bad remedy is one thing-to Prove it to be bad is another-to force the world to believe and act upon your arguments against it, in the teeth of the opinion of the world, is a still greater achievement. That merit I distinctly claim. With Coriolanus, I can say, ALONE I DID IT!

The silence and admissions of the medical press on that head equally attest the fact while the many barefaced attempts to purloin my doctrine of the Periodic movement of all Vitality, whether in Health or Disease, is as much a compliment to the genius of its real discoverer, as it is a proof of the worth of the discovery. On that discovery is based the whole Chrono-Thermal System of Medicine.

Before concluding, I will just make a remark upon the subject of the doses of all medicines. Perceiving, as you must have done by this time, the utter impossibility of foretelling, in many cases, especially of chronic disease, the particular agent by which you are to obtain amelioration or cure,-and as in almost every case where an agent does not act favourably, it does the reverse-you must see the necessity of commencing your treatment with the smallest available doses of the more potent remedies; of feeling your way, in short, before you venture upon the doses prescribed by the Schools. Let me not, for a moment, be supposed to countenance the homeopathic nonsense. The twelfth part of a grain of calomel, for example, is a proper medicine to give to an infant; but such dose has no more relation to the millionth or decillionth part of a grain of the same substance, than the twelfth part of a bottle of wine-one glass-has to a drop of that liquid. The one has power to influence the whole body; the other is utterly inappreciable beyond the taste it may impart to the tongue, the only organ it can, by any possibility, even momentarily influence. Gentlemen, pity the Homeopathists! shun the Pathologists and Blood-takers-and follow only that best guide of the physician-Nature! not in the confined sense of our mortal economy, but in every department of her works. One great principle binds them together-GOD in his UNITY, pervades them all!

APPENDIX.

THE following are a few of many letters which I have received from medical practitioners in various parts of the globe, bearing evidence to the correctness of the Chrono-Thermal System of Medicine.

From Dr. M Kenzie, of Kenellan, in Scotland.

"KENELLAN, NEAR DINGWALL. 24th Feb., 1841.

"Dear Sir,-After studying at Edinburgh, London, and Paris, I graduated in 1824, and immediately afterwards received an appointment to the Medical staff of the Army. I conceive that, phrenologically speaking, my head is a fair sample of the common run; and during my period of pupilage I had the very best opportunity of acquiring what most people call medical information.' In the Military Hospital at Fort Pitt I had abundant opportunities of testing its value, yet though I did my best to put in practice the rules and directions which I had so sedulously studied in the schools of medicine, the result of their application was anything but satisfactory to me; nor did the observations I made on the practice of my comrades mend the matter. The Sangrado system was in full operation. Like my neighbours, I did as I had been taught; but the more I considered the result of our practice, the more convinced I became that we were all in the dark, and only tampering with human life most rashly, in a multitude of cases. Still, I thought it my duty to do as my superiors directed, hoping soon to see my way more clearly. In process of time I was appointed to a Regiment, with which I served about two years. I then married, and finding that a married man has no business in the army, I resolved to embark in private practice, expecting that, with the excellent opportunities of becoming acquainted with disease in every form, which I had possessed in the army, and aided by numerous friends, I might rise easily in my profession. I settled in Edinburgh, and became a Fellow of the College of Physicians. I soon found, however, that in leaving the army for private practice, I was 'out of the frying-pan into the fire;'-there were obstacles to success that I had never even dreamed of. In the military hospital I had only to say ' Do,' and it was done; and I knew to a nicety the effect of my remedies, for in every instance they were faithfully administered. In private practice all this was changed. There, in order to live like other men by my labour, I found it absolutely essential to practise the suaviter in modo on many occasions, when the forfiter in re would have been the best for my patients. I therefore felt myself obliged to consider how others managed such matters, and I was soon able to divide the medical body into three classes. At the top of the tree I noted here and there a solitary individual, whose word was law to his patients. I endeavoured to trace the career of these favoured practitioners, and was grieved at being compelled to think that in few instances had they ascended to their eminence by the ladder of integrity, talent, or real medical knowledge. On the contrary, I was compelled to believe that these qualities often were a bar to a physician's rise, and that flattery and humbug were far more valuable qualities in the eyes of the world, and, if skilfully practised, would ensure first-rate eminence. Lower down I found a certain number who, like myself, did their best to retain practice, and preserve the vultus ad sidera. But when I looked to the bottom of the tree, I saw around it a host of creatures, void of any scruples, determined to acquire