Dr. Mac Culloch on Feveri, ^ 



and the character of our Journal will admit. This practical, 

 or properly speaking, medical work had been advertised in 

 the former ; and theautlior desires that it may be considered 

 as a portion of an entire essay, including the volume on 

 Malaria ; while he had been induced to separate this latter, 

 for the sake of general readers, who might not fancy them- 

 selves interested in medical writings, or not competent to 

 profit by them. We view this precaution on the part of the 

 author himself, or his booksellers, to have been unnecessary ; 

 as there is nothing in the two volumes before us which is not 

 adapted to the capacity of readers of every class, as well non- 

 professional as medical. Consistently with the principle 

 which he has followed in his geological and other scientific 

 articles, it has been this writer's object to exclude technical 

 language, and, as far as was practicable, even technical terms: 

 arguing justly, that it is the facility of stringing phrases of 

 common usage together, which produces that multiplication 

 of loose writings on medical, and, we may add, on many other 

 subjects, out of which it is too often impossible to extract a 

 single novelty or even a definite idea. And when he pro- 

 poses, as the test of the merit and meaning of such writings, 

 their translation into common English, we cannot but agree 

 with him that this is an operation which would go far to 

 reduce the number of books in our language, not merely on 

 medicine, but on many other departments of science, moral 

 as well as physical. 



If the style and language of this book are plain English, and 

 the manner in which the medical subjects are explained, such 

 that they can be understood by any one, and if, very lau- 

 dably as we think, the author has carefully avoided all those 

 phrases, terms, and allusions, in which medical writers seem 

 to delight, so that these volumes may lie on any table, the 

 subjects treated of are especially of a popular nature — since 

 they concern, we may truly say, every individual; while, 

 without any of the usual pretences of popular books on 

 medicine, they really will enable the people to become their 

 own physicians to a very wide extent, and in the treatment 

 of diseases, among the most universal to which mankind is 

 subject. But for this, indeed, we should not have ventured 

 on a review of this work in our Journal ; and it must now 

 be our attempt to render our analysis not less popular and 

 intelligible than the Essay itself. And as we find that some 

 contemporary journals had accused us of incivility in treat- 

 ing somewhat rudely, in our review of Malaria, the very 

 writer whose essays on the same subject we had admitted, 



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