THE design of this book is to represent the condition of the Art of Medicine and its practitioners at successive periods of history. In the execution of the plan, it has naturally happened that the characters of the men who have directly, or indirectly, exerted the greatest influence in moulding the medical art have been among the chief subjects of research and delineation. Hence the volume has assumed a lighter, more biographical, and probably more popular form, than might perhaps have been expected in a work of this nature.
There does not yet exist in the English tongue a single complete History of Medicine; nor does this book aspire to supply the deficiency. In order to do so, an account must have been given of the growth of the sciences on which the Art is built, instead of merely indications of their influence; to do which with any fulness, at least five or six volumes each as large as this one would be required. It is, indeed, a task well worth attempting; for the Standard History (Sprengel's) is now nearly out of date ; and it is time that justice should be done to our great modern anatomists, physiologists, and pathologists; but it is a task which, for its due execution, demands an amount of leisure at the disposal of few who cultivate Medicine as a profession. In the mean time this less ambitious