destructive and ungovernable hands? He,
who for an ordinary cause resigns the fate of his patient to
mercury is a vile enemy to the sick; and if he is tolerably
popular, will, in one successful season, have paved the
way for the business of life, for he has enough to do ever
afterwards to stop the mercurial breach of the constitutions
of his dilapidated patients."

And yet, this article of the _Materia Medica_ in some of its various
forms, is still more frequently prescribed than any other by the
allopathic physicians. A writer in the June number, 1868, of the
"London Chemist," having submitted to a careful examination one
thousand prescriptions, taken _seriatim_ from the files of a druggist,
states, among other curious facts, that mercury takes the lead, and
stands prominently at the head of the list. Mercury, the very name of
which strikes terror into the minds of nervous and timid patients, is
still the foremost remedial agent employed by the medical profession.

Professor DRAPER, in one of his introductory lectures, before the
University College of New York, makes the following statement:

"Even those of us who have most carefully upheld our old
professional theories, and have tried to keep in reverence the
old opinions, and the old times, find that under the advance
of the exact sciences our position is becoming untenable. The
ground is slipping away from beneath our feet. We are on
the brink of a great revolution. Go where you will, among
intelligent physicians you will find a deep, though it may be
an indistinct perception, that a great change is imminent."

The late Professor MUTTER of Philadelphia, in an introductory lecture
a few years ago, says:

"We have in truth, rested contented in ideal knowledge. We
have received as perfect, theories as idle as day dreams.
We have blindly accepted the follies of the past; and the
foundation of our art must crumble to the earth unless we
learn more discretion and better judgment in the selection of
the material of which they are to be constructed."

I might continue these quotations indefinitely; but I will not weary
you by citing more, and surely, sufficient evidence has already been
produced to sustain the allegation that the old system of medicine is
unworthy of our confidence; that, with no law upon which to base its
principles of treatment, its practice rests upon a chaotic mass of