On the Neglect of the Bath Waters. 33 



competitors for surgical pre-eminence, has stepped forward as the 

 rival of the whole college of physicians, and put forth a work 

 upon constitutional diseases, of so comprehensive a nature, 

 and such confident pretensions, as to attract more than ordinary 

 notice. According to the new light which has thus broke in 

 upon us, the endless variety of diseases, with all their compli- 

 cated phenomena, are resolved into merely sympathetic aflec- 

 tions, connected with a deranged state of the organs of diges- 

 tion, which a few doses of blue-pill, with or without other 

 gentle purgative medicines, will speedily remove. The simpli- 

 city of this doctrine has secured its ready adoption by the au- 

 thor's pupils, it having been propounded by him in his lectures 

 for many years past to a numerous class, consisting chiefly 

 of young men from the country, who, having every thing to 

 learn in six months, are pleased to find so easy a road to medi- 

 cal practice and medical fame marked out for them by their 

 learned teacher. Accordingly, imbued with principles thus 

 dexterously acquired, they have entered upon the practice of 

 their profession, and introduced the whole of his notions about 

 the digestive organs, together with his concise method of curing 

 disease, into every part of the kingdom *, Many proselytes , 

 likewise, have been made by the book, amongst those persons 

 who could not have an opportunity of hearing the lectures 

 upon this discovery. Through the numbers, then, who have 

 either drank at the fountain-head of Medical Surgery, (for 



* la general, I believe, they have implicitly adhered to it, but in this 

 place a monstrous extension of it has been made, by one individual, to a 

 part more properly termed dejective than digestive ; and, with so much 

 success that a great many of our fashionable visiters, who might have 

 drank the Bath waters, and in all probability received a cure from them, 

 have been induced to submit, not merely to repeated deglutitions of blue- 

 pill, but likewise, horresco rtferem ! to the most disgusting and dangerous 

 treatment of a mechanical kind. In some instances, too, this has been 

 accompanied with an appearance of satisfaction, not unlike that of the 

 courtiers of Louis XIV., who, by a strange perversion of sentiment and 

 loyalty, were 'not only proud to be the favourites of the Grand Mo- 

 narque, but of being likewise counted martyrs to the same disease with 

 which that personage is known to have been afflicted. 

 Vol. Xltl. D 



