means of investing them in the eyes of the vulgar with something of mystical and superstitious terror. Omne ignotum pro magnifico. So the monk mutters his orisons in an unknown tongue; and the doctor writes his prescription in that very questionable "doctor's Latin," which a mistaken abbreviation has unjustly and injuriously laid to the door of the dogs.

That they have rejected reason as a possible auxiliary in their combat with disease, the very programme of their studies is enough to prove. They look for the means of sustaining life, not to the living man, and to the various results produced upon the disorganized human mechanism by the various medications they prescribe; they regard not the periodicity and regularly recurring character of all disease; nor take advantage of those intervals of comparative health which are observable in all disorders, even the most acute and malignant, and which afford the fairest opportunity for the successful application of those remedies which experience proves best calculated to prevent, or at least indefinitely postpone, a recurrence of the crisis and attack.

On the contrary, these Anti-Improvement pundits have solemnly resolved that the secret of life and health, if any such secret there be, (a question which their private experience very naturally inclines them to deny,) can only be found, if at all, in the body of decay and death! A proposition which rather leads us to suspect that the doctors must have been educated in that terra incognita "where the monkeys dig for daylight." As well might they tell their disciples to study the aspect, character, and causes of the rainbow in a dungeon, upon whose primeval darkness no ray of light had ever intruded, as instruct them to ferret out and eliminate by anatomical research the true understanding of health from a body, in which neither health, nor life, nor the most trivial function necessary to either, exists or is in action. That a knowledge of anatomy may be serviceable to a physician, in leading him to form a correct opinion of the nature of the disorder he is first called in to rectify, we readily admit; nor could any sane person deny so evident a truism. But the doctor's business, if we understand it rightly, is not, so far as his patient is concerned, to form a correct diagnosis or opinion of the functional derangement; it is to cure that derangement, and restore the functions to their natural and requisite activity. In support of this ridiculous dissection-theory, they have recourse to a very specious analogical argument, which, when itself dissected, proves to be no argument at all. They say: "Man is a mechanism; so is a

watch. If a watch be out of order, and the motion, which is its life, dies out, will not the artificer open the case in order to find out and rectify whatever may be wanting, or out of order in the works? And can not this competent artificer, such examination being made, tell precisely what was the cause of the original derangement and chronometrical death, so to speak, of the time-piece? Does he not learn from an examination of the interior of the watch-its mechanical anatomy-how to cure its aberrations, and restore it to normal regularity? The like rule applies to all like cases; and as man is a mechanism, we can only learn how to restrain his living deviations from good health by examining and acquainting ourselves with his interior structure, its various adaptations and eccentricities."

That this argument is a specious one to men not accustomed to examine any problem independently, we admit; but place it, even for a moment, in the crucible of logic, and all its false though glittering sophistications melt and evaporate away.

In the first place, the watch is a mere mechanism, having a man-devised, man-made, and palpable motor. While man is a mechanism, it is true; but one of utterly infinite complexity, and having for his motor an essence so subtle, so etherial, and divine, that no lancet yet has probed its electric nature-no microscope made it apparent to the eye. Moreover, when the watch ceases to move, the motor mainspring can still be found within it; and, if injured, there is but trifling trouble in mending it, or replacing it altogether. But when the man ceases to breathe, his motive principle, his life, all that distinguishes his animated body from the senseless clod beneath our feet, has returned to the great source whence it came. You can neither mend it, nor recall it; nor have the "Regulars," though performing many other wonders, yet quite succeeded in replac ing it. So much for the analogical error of the postulate.

But the second error in demonstration is, if possible, more gross. They say that the artificer learns how to correct his watch by making himself acquainted with the mechanical anatomy of his time-piece; ergo, the study of the anatomy of the human body is the chief thing requisite for the cure of human ills. They forget that the watchmaker has to "study the anatomy"-not of watches in general, nor of any utterly ruined watch, but must directly open and examine the innermost and most delicate machinery of the watch put before him to be mended. Now, when the anatomical theorists are prepared to cut open and examine every patient who applies to them for cure, we admit that there will then be (but not till then) a practical analogy between the cases upon which they build their argument.

When they cut into the heart to see if it is ossified, or explore the centre of the brain to detect any symptoms of hydrocephalus; when they prove by ocular demonstration that we live and move and have our being by the grace of a mainspring, which it is their peculiar privilege to wind up, and keep in vigorous activity; then, but not till then, they will find us amongst the most clamorous petitioners for the establishment of that monopoly which they are now so feverishly soliciting. Anatomy is of service to the physician, by enabling him to form a general idea of the character and location of the functional derangement; but it does not enable him, per se, to remedy what is wrong; and far from being the first necessity and most perfect qualification of the healing art, as our wouldbe monopolists pretend, it may be rated as a valuable, but by no means indispensable, auxiliary. To know what is wrong, does not, of itself, imply the ability to correct it. If it did, the ploughman might mend the broken mainspring of his watch, and the mere anatomist check the ravages of tubercular consumption.

While justly ashamed of that branch of the medical profession which, contenting itself with a mere profession, has so long made one of the highest human arts the subject of the poet's satire, and the sneer of the philosophical essayist; and justly proud and hopeful of that reformed and aspiring branch which avails itself of every improvement, and which, by its attainments and intelligence, is rapidly dissipating those clouds of prejudice and misunderstanding which an interested rivalry was at first too successful in raising-common justice compels us to admit that many-indeed, we fear the majority-of beneficial remedies introduced into the pharmacopeia, were the casual discoveries of non-professional and, in the sense of medical science, non-educated persons. The healing virtues of many herbs, long dubbed the "old women's cures," and denounced for their simplicity and accessibility by the "Regulars of medicine," are now pretty generally acknowledged, and made available. Peruvian bark, one of our best remedies, was found by the Spaniards in common use amongst the savages inhabiting the country where it grew; while mercury, and other mineral agents, originating with the Arabians, were only introduced into Europe towards the close of the fifteenth century, by Theophrastus Paracelsus, a reformer, though in many points a mistaken one, of Switzerland. But why swell a catalogue, which alone would demand larger limits than we have proposed as the extent of this essay? The shameful fact is admitted; and, when we regard the rigidly anti-innovative at

titude which the Old-School doctors have so consistently maintained for centuries, we cease to wonder, though we can not but deplore, that so it is, and could not have been otherwise.

It required no ordinary courage to enable a practitioner so much as to confess the use of a new remedy. By doing so, he created alarm and disturbance in the profession; unsettled their profound self-complacency, and increased their apprehensions lest some thinker and reformer, some medical compound of Luther and Mirabeau, should overturn the superstructure of the system they had elaborated, and done their best to fortify. Every medical innovator has paid for his presumption the penalty of loss of practice, and professional estrangement. Harvey was denounced, and thrown out of business, because he had the audacity to discover and make known the circulation of the blood; while the great Jenner suffered professional martyrdom and legal persecution for years as a reward for having introduced the vaccine as a preventive for small-pox.

And here, indeed, the present fee-system is an illustration of the great error by which the public, to their own inappreciable hurt, have made their interests directly antagonistic to those of their medical attendants; have established, in fact, a proportion between the reward of their attendant physician and the intensity and duration of the sufferings he either inflicts, or fails to relieve. They do not, as in their other business transactions, make it to the advantage of their employé to have his duty performed as well and quickly as is possible. On the contrary, the present fee-system which prevails amongst the "Regulars," and is, indirectly, the source of their incorrigible hatred of improvement, has for its actual, though unacknowledged basis, this stupendous principle: "The worse I grow under your care, the more I suffer, and the longer you protract my sufferings, the greater shall be your reward!" Poor human nature is too fallible, too avaricious, too capable of deceiving itself where interest suggests that the deception may be profitable, to stand this test. We would not suggest that any individual practitioner would deliberately injure a patient in order to prolong his profitable visits-though this is quite sufficiently possible to suggest unpleasant suspicions; but we do affirm, that a system such as this is a reward placed upon incompetence, and must inevitably disincline its beneficiaries to depart from their established routine in quest of difficult and money-losing improvements.

We are no advocates of the "no cure, no pay" idea; for

that would incline unprincipled practitioners to exaggerate the danger of every case; and fright, we know, invariably aggravates the character of any derangement, and not unfrequently produces a disease where before it had no existence. Moreover, there are many chronic maladies, if not incapable, at least extremely difficult of cure; and such, of course, could not legitimately be brought within the sphere of such a bargain. But what we advocate, and what the common-sense of the community will finally take up as a juste milieu, or proper compromise between the interests conflicting, and ever destined to conflict, would be this: that a certain reasonable compensation should be made to each physician for his attendance and medicaments, in proportion to the extent and duration of the services required; but that a fixed sum should likewise be named and agreed upon-its payment being made to depend upon the speediness and completeness of the cure. By such an arrangement the physician would be secured, at least, of some moderate compensation for his services; while, on the other hand, his positive and full remuneration would depend upon the skill and attention he employed.

Such an arrangement would be the death-blow of that system which now tyrannizes over the mind, and levies a tribute on the health of a decreasing majority of the public of this enlightened land d give to the five thousand practitioners of the New Schoa fair field of competition, and display, by infallible statistics, the beneficial character of those deviations from "established practice," which all who have witnessed or experienced well know to be improvements of most vital need.

The "New School" would gladly embrace the offer of payment, based on such a principle as that we have endeavored to suggest. They recognize the fact, that time is money, and health a possession, for the insurance of which, no price could properly be considered as excessive; and they, therefore, feel assured that for a speedy and efficacious restoration to health and business, the public will freely pay. They feel that they are masters of the art they profess, and do not fear to adopt this maxim as the motto of their business: "Let our pay be proportionate to the skill we exhibit, the relief we afford, and the speed with which we cure !"

If the Old School practitioners entertain, or have reason to entertain, a like estimate of their own ability, let them adopt a similar motto. The public will act as umpire, and decide after a careful perusal of the undertakers' bills on either side.