556 PHYSICIANS AS THEY WEllE, AND AS THEY ARE. 



what has been poetically styled muta et ingloria ars, that obtained for 

 these men the distinguished patronage of princes arid monarchs: rib, it 

 was the almost boundless erudition which they united to an extensive 

 knowledge of the physical structure of man. Were a knowledgS of 

 medicine alone sufficient to secure this respect, the moderns, from the 

 very great improvements which have been made in every branch of the 

 science, would have stronger claims to notice. The great discoveries 

 which are daily and hourly coming to light in animal and vegetable 

 chemistry, arm them with powers altogether unknown to the ancients, 

 and by which, diseases which formerly ravaged whole districts are easily 

 controlled. Though ignorant of chemistry, and having but crude no- 

 tions of anatomy, and physiology, yet the practice with the ancients 

 differed little in mortality from the most successful practice now-a-days. 

 Whether their more extensive knowledge of the philosophy of nature 

 better fitted them for contemplating her sufferings, or their limited 

 .materia medica checked their interference, certain it is that the restora- 

 tive process was seldom disturbed, and cures were effected by with- 

 holding, .rather than administering medicines. The ponderous volumes 

 upon materia medica, and equally voluminous ones upon animal and 

 .vegetable chemistry, which daily issue from the press, would afford, 

 even to Paracelsus, had he now lived, strong hopes of discovering his 

 favourite elixir. But, unfortunately, many of the most valuable medi- 

 cinal agents which science is, hourly bringing to light, are, in the hands 

 vof ignorant pretenders to the science of medicine, slow, but sure poisons ; 

 .and the unhappy patients are worse off than in the days of chemical 

 ignorance. Then they died of disease : modern physicians supersede 

 the tedious process of death by disease, and kill by experiment. It is 

 a painful reflection to him who may have devoted days, months, nay, 

 years, to the discovery of somq powerful chemical agent, to see suffer- 

 ing human nature robbed of the benefit of his labours, by the injudicious 

 practice of ignorant physicians, who never fail to ascribe to the medi- 

 cine, faults which are peculiarly their own. Let us place for a moment 

 in juxta-position, even in imagination, a physician of the present caste 

 with Pythagoras, Democedes, or Hippocrates, at the bedside of disease. 

 What a contrast ! In the one is a mind deeply read, not only in the 

 philosophy of medicine, which he cultivates with the amiable and cha- 

 ritable view of relieving human infirmities, but also eminently in the 

 philosophy of nature. In the other, a mind cramped by vulgar preju- 

 dices, which are ever the attendants of a limited education, and where 

 medicine is cultivated, not as a science, but as a trade ; and who too 

 frequently neglect their poor unhappy patients, to pay court to the rich 

 and proud hypochondriac. 



We shall here pass over the physicians of the seventeenth and eigh- 

 teenth century, our object not being a war with the dead, and come to 

 those of our own time ; the majority of whom, uninfluenced by any of 

 those generous and noble feelings which actuated the physicians of an- 

 tiquity, sport with the lives of human beings, as though designed by 

 nature for experiment. 



The facilities which some of the Scottish universities have afforded, 

 in granting diplomas, have deluged the profession with a class of men 

 unfitted for the lowest walk in the profession ; not only ignorant of the 

 higher branches of literature, so indispensable to a- rational practice of 

 physic, but of the common rudiments of a classical education. It is no 

 uncommon thing to find these men in their little circles, where their 



