1S32.] Medicine as a 'Science and as a Trade. 633 



London, where it is below par. It is painful to reflect on the state of 

 niedicine in the great city ; abounding in wealth, talent, and industry, and 

 with every facility for its cultivation, there is scarcely a man in it known 

 beyond the limits of his professional rides as a scientific physician. The 

 paramount importance of wealth in this Babylon absorbs every other 

 consideration, and degrades a noble science into a servile trade a science 

 once deservedly held in the highest estimation, and which could boast of 

 men eminent, not only in the practice and profession of physic, but cele- 

 brated as men of letters, the companions of monarchs, and instructors of 

 princes. With Moliere we may say, '*" Mais nous avons change tout 

 cela;" a change indeed, with a vengeance, whose tracks are marked by 

 the desolation it has left. Public opinion, or rather prejudice, having 

 already stamped the profession of physic with the impress of its con- 

 tempt, and viewing that system as one of charlatanism, its professors and 

 teachers no longer cultivate it with that spirit of inquiry which marked 

 the study of medicine with the Greeks and Arabians. This indifference to 

 talent and scientific acquirements has called into existence a class of 

 practitioners whose education, limited to suit the vulgar prejudice of the 

 day, runs no danger of correcting errors which have called them from a 

 state of indigence and obscurity to affluence and notoriety. Not that 

 there are not occasionally to be met with, in this class, men of eminence 

 and erudition, who, educated for a more elevated walk in the profession, 

 and finding the tide of prejudice on the one side, and the res angusta 

 pressing hard on the other, have been obliged to compromise the dignity 

 of the profession and their own respectability, and merge the man of 

 science into the man of drugs, with whom information beyond a certain 

 extent is considered useless, and unsuited to the calibre of his patients' 

 minds. Looking at the bills of mortality in the different eras of medical 

 science, many would be tempted to suppose that no improvement has 

 been made in the treatment of disease. To deny that improvements have 

 been made in medicine, is to deny the evidence of our senses. To 

 account for the little variation in the mortality of different ages, notwith- 

 standing the great improvements of modern philosophers, however pain- 

 ful to dwell on, is a subject which demands our attention. Of what use 

 to the mass of mankind are the great discoveries which are daily and 

 hourly being introduced into medicine, unless well understood by those 

 who possess the utmost prescriptive right of experimenting in corpore 

 vili ? There are and will be in all countries a class upon which these 

 experiments may be made, whose remunerating price is generally too 

 small to command talent of a better order. From this class the bills of 

 mortality are generally swelled, whether by inherent disease, bad and un- 

 wholesome diet, or fruitless and ignorant efforts at cure, is a question 

 which we shall leave to the statistic physician to decide ; merely observing 

 that there are few cases, even under the hands of the most enlightened 

 physicians, where the desire to be doing something does not frequently 

 do too much. 



M.M. New Series. Vol. XIII. No. 78. 2 U 



