repudiated the idea of feasting; but the yeoman had, it seems, often pictured the return of the prodigal, and the principal part of the programme for the celebration of the event was the fatted calf. He would not be denied, so the fatted calf was killed. With his lavish heart he had the night before asked the Dibbles, with their families, to the feast, and old Kit the patriarch had requested, as a great favour, that they might be allowed to sit at a table by themselves, as they would like for once to see all the tribes of the royal family assembled together. This was granted. The guests of the other table were only the relations, the curate, and the domestics. Tom laughed a good deal at the idea of this "feast of the ugly mugs." Young Pretty Tommy had already been placed on the establishment. As an initiation he had been washed after a very severe struggle; and as a further aggravation had been put into a clean shirt and a suit of clothes belonging to Tom when a boy, which gave him an air of respectability very repugnant to his vagabond nature. He had now been installed as squire of the dripping-pan, a very congenial office, and one hitherto unknown in the category of Dibble labour. To dally with a ladle, and contemplate meanwhile the joints and the fowls as they turned on the spit, browning, dripping, sputtering, and crackling, must have seemed to them the very perfection of work made easy. Tommy pursued his avocation evidently with great gusto and apparent impartiality; but we have all our weak sides and leanings, and a close observer might see that there was one goose-a very fat onewhich had more than its due share of attention.

Jim had assumed the office of lord-chamberlain, or high-steward, and was busy superintending the arrangements. An altered man was Jim. There was a cock of his beaver, and an elation of manner, which were not justified by the

return of Maister Tom alone. The fact was, that he had resumed his position in society, and had once more a vocation. The yeoman had hinted, and Tom had confirmed the hint, that there were to be hounds at Tregarrow, and he was to be huntsman; and this, though they were only to be harriers, had raised him a foot in the scale of humanity. "Here are father's company,' cried out Tom, who was looking out of the window; and what a tag-rag party!"

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There they came by tribes, trooping over the court, a regular migration, looking, too, as though they had mustered in the highways and byways.

"Here we be all, maister, a nice fancy lot," said old Kit, ushering in the different groups. "I'm afeard we shall eat you out of house and hold." The yeoman did at first feel some doubts on this subject, but a look at the dame's face showed her assurance in the resources of Tregarrow to resist even such a flight of locusts as this.

We have seen the Dibble men before; we are now introduced to the Dibble matrons, and all the generations of Dibbles. There were budding Dibbles, Dibbles in the hand, Dibbles in the arm, and Dibbles at the breast, all illustrating the family characteristics. There was one other characteristic which their appearance established, and that was fecundity-it was very evident that no Dibble need be ashamed to meet his enemy in the gate. Could a Gorgon's head have been suddenly presented amid that group and turned them all to stone, what treasures of Gothic art would they have become! Youth is generally supposed to possess a certain beauty in itself. Young pigs are said to be interesting, young donkeys picturesque. Dibble babyhood despised such pretensions. The Dibbles at the breast might have been translated at once as cherubs to the outer walls of cathedrals, with infinite credit to themselves and the architectural

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style. The matrons would have made very meritorious medieval stonework saints or female demons, according to the exigency of the case; and as for the men, they would have formed a collection of gurgoyles, finials, satyrs, and heads for fountains, which would have driven a fervent medievalist to distraction. As it was, seen all alive, they were "precious bits" of ugliness, which would have delighted the heart of a humorist, and perhaps would have been more telling from the pencil of a Leech than the chisel of a Pugin.

The young generation had shown their predatory habits by spreading themselves over the house, and returning generally with a hunch of cake or bread-and-cheese. One of them in his explorations had discovered young Tommy, and immediately rushed back announcing, Mother, Tommy hath been washed." At this all the younger scions of the houses started away to witness the phenomenon, evidently regarding him in the same light as eels might do a brother who had been skinned.

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The banquet was now spread: it was a repetition of the supper, except for the introduction of geese and turkeys, and that all the viands were steaming hot.

"Now, then, Kit, you settle your company and I'll settle mine, and then we'll fall to." And the manner in which the tribes of Dibble were settled and placed at the table, under the leadership of their heads, did great credit to their organisation. Old Kit acted as master of the ceremonies with great tact; and old Beelzebub, in virtue of his having attended tithe dinners, and Pretty Tommy, from having served for a year as mace-bearer to the mayoralty, had been elected as chief carvers. It was a great occasion for the Dibbles. All the great family qualities were in the ascendant. The fish-chowder Joycey's tongue dropped oil; old Beelzebub's seemed hung to no other phrase than one of blessing and endearment. Kit

threw abroad his jokes as he dispensed the slices of turkey, and there was not a jar anywhere except when some youthful Dibble cried to have more, and another at having had too much. Kit had shown himself a political tactician in producing this gathering-feuds and misunderstandings of long date were made up now-matrons who had never met except to show their contempt, and had even pulled caps, now smiled graciously on each other. It was a good opportunity, too, for the display of offspring and of dresses, though it must be confessed that the Dibble wardrobes were more brilliant than costly, consisting generally of bright yellow and green cottons.

So the feast went on right merrily.

At the other table the mirth was more subdued, though there were glad hearts there too. The old yeoman kept looking at the son, chuckling out "a purty pordigal;" the dame, too, feasted on him, and Lily might also be excused for considering Tom the best part of the banquet. The nieces kept up the running in fun and cheerfulness, though the eldest, a very finely developed woman, evidently thought that the doctrine of fitness had scarcely been carried out in the pairing of Tom and Lily, and the curate did not seem to consider the return of the prodigal on such terms at all an improvement to the society. The mildest of the nieces, however, did her best to console him. The minor guests showed all the effects of good Christmas cheer. When the dinner was ended, Kit seemed to be looking to the yeoman for a toast. "Not yet, Kit," said he, we will first ask the passon to return thanks for Tom's return and all other mercies received." And the curate did this well and affectingly.

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Here there was a pause, and then the yeoman, after sitting for a while as if in silent thanksgiving, flourishing his tankard, rose and shouted out lustily, "Now, friends and neighbours, one and all, a jolly wassail!"

Huc, the traveller, relates that when a Lama physician happens to be without a particular drug, he is by no means disconcerted; he writes the names of the remedies on pieces of paper, which he moistens with saliva, and then rolls them up into pills. The patient tosses them down, in perfect reliance on their medicinal virtue. To swallow the name of a remedy, and to swallow the remedy itself, say the Tartars, is one and the same thing. Satirists in Europe would unanimously assent to this proposition. And yet these very satirists, after contemptuously ridiculing the ignorance and humbug of medical men, no sooner fall ill, than they resign themselves with abject submission to the prescriptions of their butts. Nay, it has been observed that those whose scorn of the Faculty is loudest, are frequently the most credulous of the pretensions of a Quack. Nor is the reason of the general reliance upon Quacks difficult to discover. The Physician is supposed to be guided by Theory; the Quack is supposed to be guided by Experience. And such is the defective training of all but exceptional minds, that there is a very general and ineradicable distrust of Theory, as if it were something aloof from experience; and a reliance upon Experience as if it were free from theory.

Yet a very slight examination will discover that the Quack is not only guided by some theory, but is far more the slave of Theory than the Physician is. When he pretends to rely only on Experience, in vaunting the cures he can effect, and the cures he has effected, the fact is that he has not one single real experience to justify his boast. In In saying this we are not simply alluding to the excessive difficulty of securing a genuine experience, owing to the great complexity of the organism and of the influences

which act upon it; we allude to the undeniable fact that the Quack does not even attempt to secure an experience. His stock in trade is a Panacea. He has a Pill, or a Lotion, or a Manipulation, which cures most, if not all diseases. He proclaims with emphasis some absurd proposition, some theory, which is meant to justify his practice. Thus, for example, he affirms that "all diseases are owing to impurity of the blood," and his panacea purifies the blood; or that "all diseases are due to a deficiency of the nervo-electric force," and his treatment will "restore" that force. These bold theoretic assertions are supported by an ostentatious list of cures. Jones was suffering from lumbago; he took the pills, and is now in health. Brown was dyspeptic; he swallowed the mixture freely, and is now recovered. Robinson was a martyr to the gout; he followed the treatment, and is "better than ever he was in his life." Such cases are multiplied and paraded. They may be authentic, or they may be fictions; but let us assume them to be genuine, and a moment's consideration will show that they are no evidence of any causal connection between the action of the drug and the recovery of health. Nay, more, except in the mere coincidence, no attempt is made to show such a causal connection.

When the public is authoritatively told that all diseases originate in the blood, it accepts the statement as if it were a first truth. Few suspect it to be a theory, and a preposterous one. Few think of inquiring of physiologists and pathologists-i.e. men who have specially studied the organism in health and disease, and who, whatever their ignorance, must at least know more of such subjects than men who have never studied them at all. Yet surely the first step should be

to ascertain, if possible, whether known facts justify the theory of impure blood being the origin of disease. Having come to an understanding on this point, a second step is necessary. When the impurity of the blood has been proved to be the origin of disease, there will come the necessity of proving that the drug, or treatment in question, does purify the blood as asserted. After this proof has been given, the cures which have followed the employment of the panacea will form rational evidence of the causal connection. But to accept an hypothesis as to the cause of disease, and then to accept an imaginary remedy, without attempting to verify either the truth of the hypothesis, or the action of the remedy, is a curious, and, unhappily, a too frequent illustration of the fallacy of "relying on experience" without ascertaining whether what we rely on is the experience it pretends to be.

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It is but too evident that the causes of disease are numerous and complex. A man may destroy his digestion" by excessive brainwork, by overfeeding, by underfeeding, by abuse of alcohol, by licentious habits, &c. The treatment which ignored these several causes and their organic consequents, and which pretended by a panacea to "restore the digestive vigour," might seem to the Quack, and to his dupe, a hopeful effort, but it must make all rational minds seriously indignant. "Digestive pills" sound full of promise; and the hope of "restoring tone to the stomach" will be very alluring to people who have not the slightest knowledge of the stomach, who can form no definite idea of what its "tone" may be, nor on what its vigour" depends, and who have never attempted to explain how this tone is to be restored by the pill. If the stomach has lost its tone, and if the disease depends on that loss, and if the pill will restore that tone, then indeed we may accept the Quack as a benefactor; but

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until he has at least attempted to settle these questions, we must pronounce him an impostor. He is cheating us with words, as the Lama physician cheats his patients.

He

All who have even a glimmering of positive knowledge respecting the organism, and who know upon what a multiplicity of concurrent causes digestion depends, will pardon the physician, if, with all his skill and stored-up experience, he fails in re-establishing the disturbed equilibrium, and fails in bringing back the "lost vigour." But this pardon should not be extended to the impudent charlatan, who, disregarding all these difficulties, pretends that the case is as simple as A, B, C. In these days it is unpardonable in him to be so wholly ignorant of his ignorance. must know that he has never studied the organism; he must know that he has never put one of his hypotheses to the test; he must know that he is trading on the ignorant credulity of the public. There was a time when such charlatanism was excusable. All men were ignorant, and the Quack was perhaps less dangerously so than the Physician, because he did not mistake his ignorance for knowledge. It is otherwise now; and although on many grounds it is not desirable that the Legislature should interfere, it is certainly desirable that Public Opinion should energetically brand, and the Press unceasingly expose, every attempt to trade on credulity. Why have we so many journals which are vigilant of moral and intellectual health, and none to bestow a thought on bodily health? Why are bad poets and shallow philosophers mercilessly criticised by a hundred pens, and trash, ten times more injurious in the shape of medical doctrines and quack pretensions, left to the contemptuous silence of the wellinformed, and an occasional sneer in one or two medical journals?

Experience is difficult in medicine, and has almost always to be interpreted by Theory. The only cases

in which it is simply relied on are those in which specifics are employed whose action is obscure. Quinine, for example, is known as a specific for ague. Its mode of action is by no means clear; but experience tells us that its effects are constant, immediate, and greatly superior to those of any other medicament. Naturally it will be employed in all cases which resemble ague in their chief characteristics; but this is done cautiously, vigilantly, and continued only in as far as experience of its effects seems to point out a constancy of action. Let a man employ quinine as a panacea, instead of a specific-that is to say, let him give it as a cure for all, or many diseases, besides ague-and he becomes a Quack. He does not "rely on experience," but on theory; he generalises from one disease to all diseases; he quits the ground of experience for that of supposition, or of impudent assertion. Whereas the Physician, far less the slave of theory, trusts more to experience by employing quinine only in such cases as are warranted by observation and experiment. He, too, must often grope in the dark; must often employ the remedy in ignorance of what its effects will be; but he is vigilant to note what its effects are, and on perceiving ill success, can resort to other remedies. Not so the Quack. He has but one arrow in his quiver, and with it he cures or kills.

It is obvious that in drawing these sharp distinctions, we are considering types, not individuals; we take the Physician and the Quack, each according to his own professed standard. In practice it is but too evident that the Physician not unfrequently acts with a recklessness and confident ignorance which bring him within the range of the batteries opened against the Quack. He, too, cheats himself and us, with words. He relies on baseless hypotheses; and prescribes remedies which are to act on metaphysical entities. He is glib about "vital forces," " ," "tone," "electricity," and

many other words which veil ignorance. He assumes an acid condition of the blood, and prescribes for it, without once attempting to ascertain whether there ever is, in health or disease, any free acid in the blood. But in saying this, we are only saying that Medicine is still in a very imperfect condition; and that its professors must reflect that condition.

It would be easy to collect a small volume of telling citations to prove the preposterous opinions which have at various times determined the practice of medicine, and which rival the absurdities of the boldest quacks. But as this would perhaps be considered unfair by the Faculty, we will select one specimen only, and it shall be from the writings of their pride and glory, Sydenham; a wiser physician, considering the state of science in his day, could not be named. Yet he says, speaking of acute and chronic rheumatism-" Both sorts of rheumatism arise from inflammation. No one doubts the inflammatory nature of pleurisy, and the blood of rheumatism is as like the blood of pleurisy as one egg is like another. Hence the cure is to be blood-letting." Had Sydenham, or any one else, ever attempted by accurate tests to ascertain whether this supposed resemblance of the two bloods was peculiar to these two diseases? No. The blood of a gouty, of a consumptive, of a rheumatic, of a bilious, of a dyspeptic, of a neuralgic patient is one and the same blood; one egg is not more like another than the blood of each of these is like the blood of another; are they, therefore, to be treated in the same way? But this is a trifle compared with the logic which concludes that "hence the cure is to be sought in bloodletting." Why, he shall tell us in his own candid style. "Respecting the cure of rheumatism," he writes to Dr Brady, " I, like yourself, have lamented that it cannot be cured without great and repeated losses of blood. This weakens the patient at the time; and if he has been previously