168 CRITICAL NOTICES OP NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



The Magazine of Healthy conducted by a Practising Physician, 

 Nos. 4, to 8. Tilt, Fleet-street. 1836. 



Quackery is a sin against the commonwealth — it leads astray the 

 pining invalid, who grasps at any nostrum or advice which a bold 

 and impudent pretender to the healing art may publish as an infal- 

 lible remedy for certain diseases, which he duly sets forth in hand- 

 bills — and it is an injury to the respectable practitioner, who, at an 

 enormous expense in a first-rate education, in travelling, and in toil, 

 from which the other liberal professions are almost wholly exempt, 

 is doomed to see an ignorant quack bear away the fruits of his la- 

 bour by puffing his universal panacea on the weak and the credu- 

 lous, and reaping the harvest of his imposition. Every sensible man 

 is struck with the monstrous absurdity of swallowing cordials and 

 pills which the manufacturer, without the least knowledge of the 

 patient's constitution and habits, asserts to be an infallible specific 

 for about twenty or thirty direful diseases which he enumerates ; 

 and yet, strange infatuation ! men of sense and discernment are often 

 found in the hour of sickness, to have recourse to this very remedy 

 which in health they so sedulously decry. This is unquestionably 

 patronizing charlatanry to the injury of the skilful practitioner, and 

 can only be palliated by the invalid labouring under mental as well 

 as bodily imbecility. 



The Magazine of Health we pronounce to be a very useful pub- 

 lication, and is a decided enemy to indiscriminate and ignorant em- 

 piricism. Its original matter is pregnant with valuable information, 

 and its critical notices of books, chiefly medical, are executed with 

 that penetration and acumen which can only arise from multifarious 

 knowledge, sound judgment, and incessant study. That it will be 

 popular, there can be little doubt, for, notwithstanding the able way 

 in which it is conducted, the price of each number is only eightpence. 

 It is not often that cheapness and worth thus go hand in hand ; but 

 in this instance, it appears that philanthropy has outweighed the 

 grosser consideration of profit. 



In an article on Diet and Regimen, there is much said on the vir- 

 ues of water-gruel to most orders of invalids ; and as most persons 

 are ignorant of the correct mode of making it, we shall do some 

 service to our invalid friends by extracting from this subject the 

 proper way in which it ought to be prepared : — 



" Mix the meal first in a little cold water, let it stand for a little 

 while, until what will not mix readily with the water, falls to the 

 bottom ; and pour off the mixed meal and water from the settlings 

 into a large quantity of boiling water. Stir it well, and let boil for 

 an hour at the very least. It is owing to the very imperfect way in 

 which gruel is usually cooked, that it disagrees so often as it does ; 

 and we think we are speaking within compass when we say that in 

 nineteen cases out of twenty where gruel has hitherto been found 

 to disagree with the stomach, it will do so no longer if this matter 

 be attended to." 



