perature. Such is the groundwork of the Chrono-Thermal System so called from Chronos, Time or Period; and Therma, Temperature or Heat. This I gave to the public in 1836. Then, for the first time, I announced the appalling fact, that up to that hour the Professors of the Healing Art had been, to a man, in all but utter darkness on the subject they pretended to teach. From the days of Hippocrates, I indisputably proved, that when the Physician succeeded in the Cure of Disease, he did so-in Irish phrase-by accident, on purpose! Thirty centuries and upwards the Blind had been leading the Blind in Medicine-the right way sometimes-more frequently the wrong! Was it wonderful that a revelation so startling should come upon the Profession like a thunderbolt? Silently, secretly, however, it has been gaining converts ever since from their ranks. Like the Religion of the Reformation in its earlier struggles, the Chrono-Thermal System has been embraced and practised by thousands who have neither the courage nor the honesty to dare the avowal. To those gallant men, who have openly come forward to bear testimony to its worth, I want words to express my gratitude. How but for them could I have so long stood against the organised opposition of the Schools-the Brodies, the Chambers', the Clarks,-who, with their clique of pedantic, sycophantic supports, conspired to cry me down for my efforts to cleanse the Augean Stable of British Medical Practice of its filth and corruption? Could the London world but know the arts by which certain men have got a name, with what astonishment would it stare to find itself precisely in the position of a deluded savage, when, for the first time, he discovered the utter worthlessness of the red and green glass, for which, year after year, he had been unsuspiciously bartering his wealth! In the dark, pigmies seem giants; Britain only knows her great men when they are dead. On Harvey and Jenner, while they lived, the beams of her warming sun never shone;—she all but deferred to acknowledge their merits till she saw them on their deaths, surrounded with that halo of immortality which all the nations of the earth united to bestow on them.

The Chrono-Thermal System of Medicine has shared the fate of every truly great discovery. Translated, reprinted, and lauded abroad, it was first denied, decried, then plagiarised at home. And now, at the eleventh hour, (or year!) when France, Germany, Sweden, and America, have each come forward to speak to its worth, I, its author, find myself here in England exposed to the hourly abuse of men who gain their bread by practising in secret, or under some paltry disguise, the very principles they have surreptitiously pilfered from me! Who does not remember the London Practice of Physic only ten years ago-the barbarities practised under the name of medicine? Leech, lancet, and calomel-where are they now-those so-called sheet-anchors of the Medical Art? The change that in that short time has been accomplished in Physic, is not less great than what has taken place in our mode of locomotion through the agency of steam. Ten years ago, where was the madman so foolhardy as to declare that the Lancet could be dispensed with in Apoplexy? Nearly ten years it is, however, since I first had to run the moral gauntlet for explaining, not only that this could be done, but that the employment of the Lancet is the most certain course to render that disease fatal! And here have we now, in 1845, Books, Pamphlets, and Reviews all corroborating the fact, but studiously concealing the name of him who first announced it! The Editor of the Medical Times, for one, will not deny, that when he first printed, as a marvel, a case of Apoplexy that had been successfully treated without Bleeding by Mr. Baldy, of Devonport, such was his dread of the professional conspiracy against me, he was obliged to draw his pen through the passage in the narration that alluded to Dr. Dickson as the first teacher of the new treatment!

Nothing can more forcibly show the value of an article, than attempts to steal it. Would a pickpocket risk detection for an empty purse? The first who committed

himself in this manner was Dr. Henry Holland, a physician of the Court. In 1839, Dr. Holland, for the first time, hazarded as a prophecy, what I had not only proved, but printed as a fact in 1836,—namely, the Intermittency of all disease. Then, too, for the first time, he suggested as a probable danger, the employment of the Lancet in Apoplexy. Successively and under new disguises, new plagiarisms followed. Sir C. Bell, Hood, Copeman, Dr. Searle and others, pretending to repudiate the Chrono-Thermal principle, adopted the Chrono-Thermal practice. I know not if Dr. Searle be the same person who sent me his pamphlet about the Gases, "with the author's respectful compliments and admiration" inscribed on the title-page. Some such similar expression in the body of the book he lately printed, "On the Tonic Treatment of Diseases of the Brain," would have spared me the necessity of telling the world that the practice he advocates in those diseases is borrowed entirely from me. Sir George Lefevre, I regret to find, has followed in the same slippery track -quoting Dr. Holland, instead of me, on the subject of Apoplexy. "Dr. Baillie said in his day that Palsy was upon the increase. It is not improbable (remarks Sir George) that the UNIVERSAL system of blood-letting upon all such attacks, and even threatenings of them, has converted remedial into incurable diseases. Paralysis has sometimes immediately followed the depletion intended to prevent Apoplexy." Here the practice he condemns is admitted to be "universal." To whom must we attribute this universality of a bad practice? To whom but to the teachers in the various medical schools-the so-called leaders of the medical world-the Brodies, the Chambers', and others of that stamp, who have so long led the Profession by the nose, and the Public by the ear! Winter after winter in their Lectures at St. George's Hospital, did Sir Benjamin Brodie and Dr. Chambers assure their worshipping pupils that the Lancet and the Leech are the sheet-anchors of Apoplexy. "Bleed! bleed! bleed!" was their cry-and bleed, bleed, bleed! was their practice. Of what slaughter have not these men been the cause? Said I not truly, The Blind have been leading the Blind in Medicine? By the terrible doctrines they have so long taught, must Sir B. Brodie and Dr. Chambers now stand or fall. Among the multitude of fools they may still find patients. The clique of sycophants who professionally support them, already begin to turn with the turning stream. One word to Sir George Lefevre, who has so unconsciously helped to this exposure. Why, when this good travelling physician was so elaborate on the new treatment of Apoplexy, did he omit to name the real author of that treatment in his work? and how came he to call his treatise "An Apology for the Nerves?" His nerves only require an apology, who conspires to rob genius of its due. The next book Sir George indites, may possibly be-An Apology for Himself!

The Chrono-Thermal Principle is denied, disguised, plagiarised, and whispered away-the Chrono-Thermal Practice secretly triumphs in every hand! Dr. Copland, it is true, in his peculiar fashion, has admitted the correctness of both; but to account for it, he contends, that within the last five and-twenty years Disease has changed its type-that the physical constitution of man has changed its character! Pity he did not sooner announce his discovery! For something like five-and-twenty years has this very Dr. Copland been ever and anon favouring the public with his notions about Medicine. But not till the year of Grace 1844, did he tell the benighted world, that the diseases of mankind had ceased to be continual, and had all [to gratify Dr. Dickson?] taken on the Intermittent Type-that the Lancet and the Leech must, henceforth, give way to Bark and Tonics "even in Inflammation of the Chest!" Ah! Dr. Copland, why not confess at once you had just been taking a peep at Disease through Dr. Dickson's spectacles? As it is, you have unwittingly paid him a compliment at the expense of your integrity, your honour, and your understanding. The Type of Disease change! Forms change; Types are immutable! A Continual Disease! Who ever heard of an eternal tempest or an eternal

storm?

From the beginning of Time there never was a continual disease-a conti. nual tempest of the human body! How degrading these piratical attempts to take my Bark, and throw its owner overboard! They afford an index, however, to the present morale of the Profession. Vain will be its calls upon any government to reform it, till its members shall have first individually learnt to reform themselves.

Among the pitiful persons who have been thus amusingly employing themselves, I must not forget to notice a country practitioner, of the name of Laycock, who figures as a member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. "The British Association," we are told by the Times newspaper, “began at York; -what it has brought forward, of new, is not true-what, of true, is not new!" From this sweeping condemnation of the Times I wholly dissent. The Herschells, the Bucklands, the Sedgwicks, the Murchisons,-Faraday, Brewster, Airey, have laboured too successfully in science, not to rebut with all sensible people, this language of the Times. These, with other illustrious names, belong to the British Association. But, unfortunately, connected with it also, is a rather noisy class of people-principally of the Doctor tribe-who hope to emerge from obscurity, by clinging to the mantles of the truly great men who belong to it. Of this exceptional class is Doctor Laycock. To him and to his doings, the censures of the Times completely apply. He began at York. At York, in 1842, by means of a false tail and other Yorkshire tricks, he disfigured and disguised my hobby, Vital Periodicity, to pass it off afterwards as his own at one of the meetings of the British Association. Not content with this, he did the same in the Lancet; and, some time after, he repeated the offence in Forbes' Medical Review-that well-known receptacle of stolen property. Blush! Messrs. Chambers, for having allowed him to do the same in your respectable Edinburgh Journal. As a specimen of the false tail he tacked to my hobby, let me give the first joint:-"A day of twelve hours," quoth Laycock, "is the basil unit of Vital Periodicity." The merest schoolboy could tell him, that a day, being the measure of one full revolution of the Earth, takes twenty-four, instead of twelve hours, for its accomplishment; and that the basil unit of all Periodicity must necessarily be the smallest portion of Time the mind can imagine-a second being sufficient for every practical purpose. My letters in the Medical Times very speedily stripped this jackdaw of his borrowed feathers. With a perseverance, however, worthy of a better cause, I find him again at his tricks with the British Association. Only within the last few weeks, the Botanical Zoological Section of that body-all doctors, of course-appointed a committee to inquire into the "Periodicity of Plants and Animals,"-got up, I happen to know, at the instance of Mr. Laycock, to shield him and his delinquencies from the scorn and contempt of a profession he, and so many people like him, have degraded. Oh, for the report of this precious Committee! The Periods of sowing, planting, flowering and reaping,-"annuals," "biennials," "septennials,” and so forth,-taken for the nonce from the Gardener's Chronicle, when prettily dressed up with a certain imposing technicalityof manner will furnish forth a highly original dish on the Periodicity of Plants. While the plundered contents of my volume, variously distorted, and mixed up with the history and habits of Birds and Beasts, -not forgetting the nidification, egg-hatching, and breeding of the genus "Goose" and class "Reptile," the cackling and slimy creatures with which they are so familiar,—will be reproduced as a scientific novelty on Animal Periodicity. On this particular occasion the pilfering Magpie, by desire, will be left out; so also, perhaps, will be the mare's nest of "a day of twelve hours." The whole performance, however, to conclude with a handsome compliment to the talented author of the discovery-Doctor Laycock, the quondam York apothecary. Alas! for the learned Laycock-to have his name and his fame withered in a moment by a slight comparison of the little word, DATES. For these and some amusing facts, I refer the reader to the correspondence in the Appendix.

28, Bolton Street, Piccadilly, September, 1845.

DR. TURNER'S INTRODUCTION

TO

THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION.

THIS work was published in London under its second title, "Fallacies of the Faculty," a phrase which does not convey a proper idea of the important character of the production; like the "Curiosities of Literature," and so forth, it might rather lead people to suppose it designed simply to attract the attention of the curious, or to divert the idle. Hence, with due deference to the author, I have given prominence to what he had made the second branch of its title, as best calculated to indicate the use and nature of the book.

Dr. Dickson's views of disease are simple and easily understood. "More than twenty-three centuries," he says, "have elapsed since Hippocrates distinctly announced the Unity of Morbid Action-omnium morborum unus et idem modus est—The type of All Disease is one and identical. These are his words, and that is my That is the case upon which unprejudiced and disinterested posterity will one day pronounce a verdict in my favour,-for the evidence I am prepared to adduce in its support, will be found to be as perfect a chain of positive and circumstantial proof as ever was offered to human investigation." This "Type" is fever and ague, or Intermittent Fever.

case.

The following are the conclusions to which Dr. Dickson arrives on the subject of Health and Disease:

1. The phenomena of perfect Health consist in a regular series of alternate motions or events, each embracing a special Period of time.

2. Disease, under all its modifications, is in the first place a simple exaggeration or diminution of the amount of the same motions or events, and being universally alternative with a Period of comparative Health, strictly resolves itself into Fever-Remittent or Intermittent, Chronic or Acute;-every kind of structural disorganization, from Tooth-Decay to Pulmonary Consumption, and that decomposition of the kneejoint, familiarly known as White Swelling, being merely developments in its course: -Tooth-consumption, Lung-consumption, Knee-consumption.

3. The tendency to disorganisation, usually denominated Acute, or Inflammatory, differs from the Chronic or Scrofulous in the mere amount of motion and temperature; the former being more remarkably characterised by excess of both, consequently exhibits a more rapid progress to decomposition or cure; while the latter approaches its respective terminations by more subdued, and therefore slower and less obvious terminations of the same action and temperature. In what does consumption of a tooth differ from consumption of the lungs, except in the difference

of the tissue involved, and the degree of danger to life, arising out of the nature of the respective offices of each?

The remedies used in the treatment of Disease, Dr. Dickson terms Chrono-Thermal, from the relation which their influence bears to Time or Period, and Temperature, (cold and heat,) Chronos being the Greek word for Time, and Thermà for Heat or Temperature. These remedies are all treated of in the various modern works upon the Materia Medica. The only agents this system rejects, are "the leech, the bleeding-lancet, and the cupping instrument."

The subject of blood-letting occupies a considerable portion of these Lectures. What first caused the author to perceive its dangers, will appear in the following passage:-"I have not always had this horror of blood-letting. In many instances have I formerly used the lancet, where a cure, in my present state of knowledge, could have been effected without; but this was in my noviciate, influenced by others, and without sufficient or correct data to think for myself. In the Army Hospitals I had an opportunity of studying disease, both at home and abroad. There I saw the fine tall soldier, on his first admission, bled to relief of a symptom, or to fainting. And what is fainting. A loss of every organic perception-a death-likə state, which only differs from death by the possibility of a recall. Prolong it to permanency, and it is death. Primary symptoms were of course got over by such measures; but once having entered the hospital walls, I found that soldier's face become familiar to me., Seldom did his pale countenance recover its former healthy character. He became the victim of consumption, dysentery, or dropsy; his constitution was broken by the first depletory measures to which he had been subjected."

Our author objects to the use of blood-letting, for this best of reasons, “that we' have remedies without number, possessing each an influence equally rapid, and an agency equally curative, without being, like blood-letting, attended with the insuperable disadvantage of abstracting the material of healthy organization. I deny not its power as a remedy in certain cases, but I question its claim to precedence even in these. Out of upwards of twelve thousand cases of disease that have, within the last few years, been under my treatment, I have not been compelled to use it once. Resorted to under the most favourable circumstances, its success is anything but sure, and its failure involves consequences which the untoward administration of other means may not so certainly produce. 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. To say blood-letting is a bad thing 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."

Having always had a repugnance to the letting of blood, the practice of my profession, according to the light in which I was instructed, was, up to 1841, a source of great dread-especially in the treatment of acute diseases. I could not see my way clearly-I was not satisfied-I revolted from a system of practice to which my understanding could not give its full and entire sanction. In that year a copy of Dr. Dickson's work was placed in my hands. I read it with delight, and with a strong conviction of its truth-a conviction which time and experience have amply confirmed. Some examples of the results of this experience will be found among the few notes I have added in the course of the work.