( 445 ). 
MISCELLANEOUSESSAYS. 
Thoughts on Physic and Physicians, 
From the European Magazine. 
Dum tentat pulsum vene, dum stercora 
versaty 
Fullitur & fallit: sed non discriminis equa 
Conditio. Llle miser moritur (causamque 
canendi 
calvis prebet, caldisque cucullis 
Hic alius, contra,sceleris mercederecepta, 
Causatur superos, & satis imputat ipsis 
(Si quis obit) \etusque implet multo zre 
crumenam. 
Zodiac. Vit. 4 Palingenio. 
wy young physician who wish- 
es to come into practice very 
speedily, should always set out with 
anew theory. If he could attempt 
to prove that the blood does not 
circulate, he would be most cer- 
tainly a made man. He should 
make, too, some wonderful disco- 
very in some little article of diet; 
for instance, he should attack the 
wholesomeness of salt, of bread, or 
of the inside of a sirloin of beef in 
preference to the outside. He 
should attempt something singular 
in his manner; he may be either 
very brutal or very polished, as he 
pleases. Radcliffe told Mead one 
day, on the latter’s starting for prac- 
tice, ‘* There are two ways, my 
boy, for a physician to treat his 
patients; either to bully or to cajole 
them: I have taken the first, and 
done very well, as you see; you 
may take the latter, and perhaps do 
as well.” 
Skill in pursuits not very conso- 
nant to medieal ones, now and then, 
has a great effect in procuring prac- 
tice; it has been found to have been 
of great use to affect fox-hunting, 
boxing, &c. Singularity* is what 
affects the general run of mankind 
with wonder; and from wonder to 
admiration the transition is obvious. 
A physician too should never affect 
ignorance of the cause of any com- 
plaint ; he should even place it in 
the pancreas, or the pineal gland, 
if he has no other place ready for it. 
He must always be ready with an 
answer to every question that a 
lady puts to him; the odds are, 
that she will be satisfied with it; 
he must not care whether there be 
or be not a possible solution of it. 
I remember hearing a lady ask her 
apothecary, from what substance 
castor oil (the oleum palmz Christi) 
was made; he, unembarrassed, said, 
it was made from the beaver.—I 
did not expose his ignorance, but 
* Dr. Taylor being consulted on the complaint of an infant who had aschixrous 
liver, forbade the use of potatoes, which he pronounced was a species of the deadly 
nightshade. The sickly infant is become a stout man; and, in spite of the Doctor, 
has been as great an eater of potatoes ay any Trish giant, 
desired 
