^SCULAPIUS. 527 



"ever forth the broad creation, a divine improvisation, from 

 ray heart proceeds." The heinous offense of the quack is, 

 that he steals ; does not "render unto Caesar the things which 

 be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's," but 

 would feloniously rob the altar of life of its sacred fire, to 

 melt his gold and roast his potatoes. Taking his ideas, (when 

 he has any,) his language, his intellectual conceptions, of 

 which his stock is meagre enough, from the regular scientific 

 profession, he would assume an originality and newness which 

 cannot appertain to shams and appearances, which are at 

 best but beggarly imitations of something which has an 

 honest and earnest existence. He would varnish the false 

 and accidental, into the appearance of the absolute and real. 

 Living and moving in a world of insincerities and lies, he 

 howls of persecution and monopoly, privileged orders, and 

 learned professions, steals the prerogatives of all, and, bow- 

 ing obsequiously, assumes, without shadow of right, the im- 

 munities, privileges, and emoluments pertaining to the same, 

 and thus is perpetually a felon, serving the devil with all the 

 " liveries of heaven" upon his back. 



This is the cardinal confession of sin. Why the quack's 

 perpetual abuse of the regular profession ? Why this imi- 

 tation ? Why this continued stretching to and affectation 

 of the possession of the achievements of science ? Why 

 does each fashionable quack profess once to have been of the 

 regular profession and old school ? Why this inward fealty 

 to an authority which they outwardly ignore ? The regular 

 profession, in reliable history, stretches back hundreds of 

 years. Conservative as to what it has found with alembic 

 and microscope, crucible and dissecting knife, it questions 

 with intensity of earnestness every innovation, and asks of 

 all propositions in the art of healing, are they true ? have 

 they " quod erat demonstrandum" affixed to them ? Why 

 the honest new or rational progressive should quarrel 

 with venerable conservatisms, and surely-rooted truisms, and 

 be impatient under the asking of sound questions, is sur- 

 prising. The honest, earnest, and sensible new, has always 



