re, in using
amulets, must be in squaring them to the imagination of patients: let
the newness and surprise exceed the invention, and keep up the humour by
a long scroll of cures and vouchers; by these and such means, many
distempers have been cured. Quacks again, according to their boldness
and way of addressing (velvet and infallibility particularly) command
success by striking the fancies of an audience. If a few, more sensible
than the rest, see the doctor's miscarriages, and are not easily gulled
at first sight, yet, when they see a man is never ashamed, in time, jump
in to his assistance."

There is much truth and pertinence in some of the above remarks, and
they apply nearly to the general practice of the present day. The farces
and whims of people require often as much discrimination on the part of
the physician as the disease itself. Those who know best how to flatter
such caprices, are frequently the best paid for their trouble. Nervous
diseases are always in season, and it is here that some professional
dexterity is pardonable. Nature, when uninterrupted, will often do more
than art; but our inability upon all occasions to appreciate the efforts
of nature in the cure of diseases, must always render our notion, with
respect to the powers faith, liable to numerous errors and deceptions.
There is, in fact, nothing more natural, and at the same time more
erroneous, than to lay the cure of a disease to the door of the last
medicine that had been prescribed. By these means the advocates of
amulets and charms, have ever been enabled to appeal to the testimony of
what they are pleased to call experience in justification of their
pretensions, and egregious superstitions; and cases which, in truth,
ought to have been classed, or rather designated, as lucky escapes, have
been triumphantly pulled off as skilful cures; and thus, medicines and
medical practitioners, have alike received the meed of unmerited praise,
or the stigma of unjust censure. Of all branches of human science,
medicine is one of the most interesting to mankind: and, accordingly as
it is erroneously or judiciously cultivated, is evidently conducive to
the prejudice or welfare of the public. Of how great consequence is it,
then, that our endeavours should be exerted in stemming the propagation
of errors, whether arising from ignorance, or prompted by motives of
base cupidity, in giving assistance to the disseminations of useful
truths, and to the perfect