his favorite guard to his own table, where he experimented
on each particular grenadier with a specific form of diet, so as to
determine its cause and possible remedy. He did not look upon our
knowledge of pathology and our skill in diagnosis as being sufficiently
advanced or perfect to make him feel but that a treatment for an obscure
disease like his own would be pretty much a matter of guess-work.
Charles Reade, in his "Man and Wife," shows an intimate knowledge of
medical science where he philosophizes on the effects of an irregular
life and of over-physical training. His logic is sound science. Defoe
and Cervantes show a like intelligent insight as to medicine; and it was
not without reason that Sydenham, the English Hippocrates, advised a
student of medicine who entered his office as a student to begin the
study of medicine by the careful study of "Don Quixote," remarking that
he found it a work of great value, which he still often read. The works
of Bacon and of Adam Smith on "Moral Sentiments;" the famous treatise on
the "Natural History of Man," by the Rev. John Adams; the later works of
Buckle, Spencer, Darwin, Draper, Lecky, and other robust wielders of the
Anglo-Saxon pen, as well as the works of Montaigne, Montesquieu, La
Fontaine, and Voltaire, are all works that the medical man could
probably read with more profit than loss of time. In fact, either Hume,
Macaulay, or any philosophical work on history will furnish to the
physician additional knowledge of use in his profession. No physician
can afford to neglect any study that in any manner adds to his knowledge
of the natural history of man, as therein is to be found the foundation
of our knowledge as to what constitutes health, and as to what are the
causes that lead humanity to diverge from the paths of health into those
of physical degeneracy and mental and bodily disease.

We have in medicine many sayings which pass for truisms, which are,
after all, misleading. We say, for instance, keep the feet warm and the
head cool; this will not always either keep you comfortable or well, as
we know that in neuralgias it is absolutely necessary, either for
comfort or to get well, to keep the head warm. While so much stress is
laid on the necessity of keeping the head cool, a thing a person is sure
to look after whenever the head becomes uncomfortably warm, and to which
can be ascribed but few ailments or deaths, we hear comparatively
nothing about the thermometri