pon the common sense of
mankind. Those who are but imperfectly acquainted with the various
causes from which the same disorder originates in different individuals,
can never entertain such a vulgar and dangerous notion. They will easily
perceive, how much depends upon ascertaining with precision, the seat
and cause of the complaint, before any medicine can be presented with
safety or advantage:--even life and death are, we are sorry to add, too
often decided by the first steps. Different constitutions, different
symptoms, and stages of disease, all require more or less a separate
consideration. What is more natural than to place confidence in a
remedy, which has been known to afford relief to others in the same kind
of disposition? The patient anxiously enquires after a person who has
been afflicted with the same malady; he is eager to know the remedy that
has been used with success; his friend or neighbour imparts to him the
wished for intelligence; he is determined to give the medicine a fair
trial, and takes it with confidence. From what has been stated, it will
not be difficult to conceive, that if his case does not exactly
correspond with that of his friend, any _chance_ remedy may prove
extremely dangerous, if not fatal.

Hence it becomes evident, that the results are not to be depended upon,
nor the chance risked. The physician is obliged to employ all his
sagacity, supported by his own experience, as well as by that of his
predecessors; and yet he is often under the necessity of discovering,
from the progress of the disease, what he could not derive from the
minutest research. How then can it be expected, that a novice in the art
of healing should be more successful, when the whole of his method of
cure is either the impulse of the moment, or the effect of his own
credulity? It may be therefore truly said, that life and death are
frequently entrusted to chance!

The late Dr. Huxham, a physician of some eminence in his day, when
speaking of Asclepiades, the Roman empiric, says: "This man from a
_declaimer_ turned _physician_, and set himself up to oppose all the
physicians of his time; and the novelty of the thing bore him out, as it
frequently doth the quacks of the present time; and ever _will while the
majority of the world are fools_." In another place, he curiously
contrasts the too timid practice of some regular physicians, with the
hazardous treatment, which is the leading feature of quacks: "The timid,