Unhappily this method did not always succeed, and the advice which he received to restrict himself to a strict regimen, and to leave Bejart, was well worth the morsel of Parmesan cheese which his old Laforest gave him the day of his death."* Simon adds, that all the memoirs of private persons, those of Dangeau, St. Simon, De Retz, the Letters of Madame de Sévigné, abound with the most cruel accusations and the greatest contempt, as respects the art of medicine and its professors. Scarcely an eminent person is reported to have died whose death is not imputed to the ignorance and unskilfulness of his medical attendants. Similar instances might easily be adduced from our own popular literature. Dr. Johnson, it is well known, ridiculed the idea of feeling a man's wrist to discover what was going on in his constitution. Napoleon always refused to take medicine, and had no confidence in any branch of the healing art except surgery; and other eminent men have fallen victims to their absurd scepticism and obstinacy. The common parlance of society will furnish every one with instances of a professed contempt for and disbelief of the principles of medicine.

Side by side with this scepticism we often see an enormous amount of credulity on medical subjects. It is worthy of remark, indeed, that the two points on which superstition has chiefly laid hold, are religion and medicine, perhaps because it is on these two points that men's passions are the strongest and their knowledge the smallest. What people do not fully comprehend usually excites both hope and fear more than what they do, and where knowledge ceases imagination supplies the deficiency. Hence we may adduce the desirableness of a more general enlightenment of the mind on scientific subjects. It is in proportion to our advances in science and knowledge that juster

* Déontologie Médicale, liv. iii, ch. i.

views of the value of medicine have prevailed; but great improvements may yet be hoped for. Gregory was so impressed with the importance of an enlightenment of the public mind with regard to medical subjects, that he recommends laymen to study medicine as a branch of general knowledge. "If," says he, "a gentleman has a turn for observation, the natural history of his own species is surely a more interesting subject, and affords a larger scope for the display of genius, than any branch of natural history. If such men were to claim their right of inquiry into a subject which so nearly concerns them, the good effects in regard to medicine would soon appear." But this appears to us a questionable proposition. The study of medicine is too extensive, too serious, and requires too great a concentration of the time and thoughts, to be taken up in a superficial manner, and experience often shows us that the reading of popular treatises and getting the mind preoccupied with a set of notions on medical subjects, are productive of very hurtful effects to those patients who do not possess an uncommon share of good sense and discernment. If persons would but learn to act in medicine as they would on other subjects, and infer that in a science so complicated and difficult, he who has most studied it is most likely best to understand it, it would be a better safeguard against imposture than any smatterings of medical knowledge could prove.

The history of impostures and superstitions in medicine is indeed a curious chapter in history. Dr. Falconer, in writing to Dr. Lettsom, says, in reference to Mayersbach the water doctor, "What an imposture this to be practised in the 18th century, when we are all so eager to cast off all imposition both in arts, politics, and religion! It will remain as a monument of the folly of the nation in our history, and make persons discredit our accounts of the improvements made in this age."

Medical superstitions are by no means extinct in our own day. Metallic tractors, St. John Long, brandy and salt, have each in their turn waxed and waned; but we have still underworking systems which are to supersede all regular art. Of the two systems which are now bidding high for public favour, namely, Homœopathy and Hydropathy, Dr. Marshall Hall, in his Practical Observations and Suggestions,' recently published, does not scruple to say, “The former is indeed the art of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease; the latter possesses great power. It may be compared to gambling when the stakes. are high." Of these systems, and of quackery in general, we shall have occasion to speak again, and shall now dismiss the subject, merely observing that until the love of the marvellous shall be a passion extinct in human nature, and until all mystery, jugglery, and affectation are rooted out of the profession itself, we cannot expect to see the last of these absurd pretensions.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF DR. CHEYNE.

Dr. Cheyne was born in Scotland in 1671, and was originally intended for the church, but hearing Dr. Pitcairn lecture before the University of Edinburgh, he decided upon the study of medicine, in which he graduated. During the early part of his life, to use his own words, he "passed his youth in close study, and almost constant application to the abstract sciences, in which his great pleasure consisted, and consequently in great temperance and a sedentary life. At the age of thirty," he thus continues, "upon my coming to London, I all on a sudden changed my whole manner of living. I found the bottle companions, the younger gentry, and the free livers to be the most easy of access, the more quickly susceptible of friendship and acquaintance, nothing being necessary for that purpose but to be able to eat heartily, and swallow down much liquor; and being naturally of a large size, a cheerful temper, and tolerable lively imagination, and having in my country retirement laid in stores of ideas and facts, by these qualifications I soon became caressed by them, and grew daily in bulk and in friendship. My health was in a few years brought into great distress by so sudden and violent a change. I was excessively fat, short-breathed, lethargic, and listless."

After mentioning a severe attack of intermittent fever from which he suffered, he goes on to describe the malady

which quite disabled him from continuing his former habits. He says, "I was suddenly seized with a vertiginous paroxysm, so extremely frightful and terrible as to approach nearly to a fit of apoplexy, but by degrees it turned to a constant violent headache, giddiness, anxiety, lowness, and terror, so that I went about like a malefactor condemned, or one who expected every moment to be crushed by a ponderous instrument of death hanging over his head. On this occasion all my bouncing, protesting, undertaking companions forsook me, they could not bear, it seems, to see their companion in such misery and distress, but retired to comfort themselves with a cheer-upping cup." After speaking of his plan of treating himself, he goes on to say, "whilst I was thus, as I have said, forsaken by my holiday friends, and my body was as it were melting away like a snowball in summer, being dejected, melancholy, and much confined. at home by my course of mineral medicines, and courting retirement, I had a long season for meditation and reflection, (my faculties being then as quick and clear as ever), which I was the more readily led into, that I concluded myself infallibly entering into an unknown state of things. Having had a liberal and regular education, with the instruction and example of pious parents, who had first designed me for the church, I had preserved a firm persuasion of the great and fundamental principles of all virtue and morality, viz. the existence of a supreme and infinitely perfect Being, the freedom of the will, the immortality of the spirits of all intelligent beings, and the certainty of future rewards and punishments."

It would not befit this slight sketch of Dr. Cheyne's biography to pursue farther the deeply interesting account he gives of the state of his mind, except so far as is needful in order to illustrate the points on which Professor Marx chiefly comments in his letter. Dr. Cheyne adds, "the fright, anxiety, dread, and terror which, in minds of such a