.. The patient treated on the fashionable theory,
sometimes recovers in spite of the medicine. The medicine, therefore,
restores him (!!!), and the doctor receives new courage to proceed in
his experiment on the lives of his fellow-creatures!"

Sir Walter Scott says, of Napoleon: He never obeyed the medical
injunctions of his physician, Dr. O'Meara, and obstinately refused to
take medicine. "Doctor," said he, "no physicking. We are a machine made
to live. We are organized for that purpose. Such is our nature. Do not
counteract the living principle. Let it alone; leave it the liberty of
defending itself; it will do better than your drugs. The watchmaker
cannot open it, and must, on handling it, grope his way blindfold and at
random. For once that he assists and relieves it, by dint of tormenting
it with crooked instruments, he injures it ten times, and at last
destroys it."

CHAPTER C.

AN ANTI-MEDICAL PREMIUM.

The Massachusetts Medical Society, in the year 1856, were authorized by
an unknown individual to offer a premium of one hundred dollars for the
best dissertation which should be presented to them, on or before April
15, 1857, on the following subject, viz.: "_We would regard every
approach towards the rational and successful prevention and management
of disease without the necessity of drugs, to be an advance in favor of
humanity and scientific medicine._"

A number of essays were accordingly presented, having, as is usual in
such cases, various degrees of merit; but the preference was given to
one written by Worthington Hooker, M. D., of New Haven, Conn. This essay
is to be published in due time, and it is devoutly hoped there will be
as little delay as possible in the circulation of so remarkable, and, as
I have no doubt, valuable, an essay.

The facts in connection with this essay, taken as an item in the history
of human progress, are truly remarkable. The very title of the essay is
at once peculiar and striking; but the main idea which it suggests to
the mind is much more so. That a learned society, in the literary
metropolis of New England, if not of the United States, should, at the
present time, in any way or shape, encourage a discussion of the
question, whether, in the practice of medicine, drugs can be dispensed
with, was not an event to be expected or so much as dreamed of. It is,
therefore, I repeat, very remarkable, and must have a deeper meaning
than at first appears.

What, then,