86 Monthly Review of Literature. 



ing is the calm and experienced practioner? He can command disease-, 

 when disease stands undisguised ; but, if some cheap " Magazine of Health" 

 shall have infused its poison into the minds of the public, woe to the un- 

 happy sick. 



We trust the " Magazine of Health" will remember our warning of last 

 month in her gambols for 1837. 



The Fallacy of the Art of Physic as taught in the Schools, with the 

 Development of New and Important Principles of Practice. 

 By Samuel Dickson, M. D. Cheltenham. Longman and Co. 



QUACKERY most vile 1 most contemptible ! in how many disgusting shapes 

 wilt thou disclose thyself to the instructed eye? Let us make any of our 

 readers the judge of the above title; let him but poise the "vain inglorious 

 boast" in the fair balance of reason : he will then infer, what we have proved 

 in the examination of this bare-faced placard, that it is a tissue " of dreamy 

 vagaries of hallucination." 



Shades of Galen, Hippocrates, Haller, Cullen, the Hunters, Baillie, and of 

 Laennec, shades of all that have been most eminent in your profession, rest 

 in peace j for the breath of the reviler shall not move the tender blade that 

 springs around your tombs. But tremble ; ye mottled groups of Homaeopathists 

 and Hygeists ; ye grubbers in the folly and weakness of mankind, kneel before the 

 banner of legitimate medicine. Fever, Fever, is the only malady, to which man 

 is subject ; and this one, in the first instance, has no relation to organic change 

 as a cause. Dance and be gfad, ye consumptives, ye gouty, ye dispeptic ; for the 

 army hath yielded up its modern Esculapius, and, for the mortality caused by 

 many bloody wars, has sent this omnibus healer to the world. But to re- 

 flect calmly, if it be possible upon such impertinence. Our author displays 

 occasionally too much modesty. He says " how far in proposing it (the one 

 malady) we are entitled to the merit of originality," &c. We would beg to as- 

 sure him, that none will venture to dispute his originality. He is the true, the 

 only original, the real Simon Pure ; and Morison himself would not dispute 

 his right to the laurels. 



We should waste both time and space in handling so foul a subject any 

 longer. Suffice it to say that the sooner the author shall buy up all the copies 

 of his physic, and make therewith a fierce bonfire to outshine his blushes, 

 the sooner will the cause of honesty and humanity be vindicated. That he 

 may wish to cut out the regular and more conspicuous practitioners of Chel- 

 tenham we doubt not, and that he can make professions of impossibilities to 

 the world we see; but we would hint to him that an ephemeral fame, having 

 its source in vain boasting ignorance, is not the surest way of obtaining the 

 confidence of a reasoning and independent public. 



Treatise on the Structure of the Ear and on Deafness. By A. 

 W. WEBSTER. Published for the Author. 



THE author of this treatise reminds us in his opening page of a maxim 

 which we have always practised in our reviews : 



" In every work regard the writer's end, 

 Since none can compass more than they intend." 



This latter clause cannot apply to Mr. Webster, for he hath compassed, in as 

 far as he is able, the one end which he proposed to himself in writing this. 

 book, viz., the puffing of a certain instrument of his invention, consisting of 

 a tube or assemblage of tubes, and called by him otaphone. 



We most sincerely wish our ingenious and creative author a ready sale for 

 his " otaphones," and trust that our readers will wish so too ; we would only 

 reprove him for a little presumption in his introduction which we think too 

 juvenile. First, Let him read Arnott's " Physics," or Roget's " Bridgewater 



