m MEDICAL SCIENCE. 63 



plan of treatment which John Brown taught in Edin- 

 burgh in the last quarter of the last century, and 

 Miner and Tully fiercely advocated among ourselves 

 in the early years of the present. The worthy physi- 

 cians last mentioned, and their antagonist, Dr. Gallup, 

 used stronger language than we of these degenerate 

 days permit ourselves. " The lancet is a weapon 

 which annually slays more than the sword," says Dr. 

 Tully. " It is probable that, for forty years past, opium 

 and its preparations have done seven times the injury 

 they have rendered benefit, on the great scale of the 

 world," says Dr. Gallup. 



What is the meaning of these perpetual changes 

 and conflicts of medical opinion and practice, from an 

 early antiquity to our own time ? Simply this : all 

 " methods " of treatment end in disappointment of 

 those extravagant expectations which men are wont 

 to entertain of medical art. The bills of mortality 

 are more obviously affected by drainage, than by this 

 or that method of practice. The insm-ance compa- 

 nies do not commonly charge a different percentage 

 on the lives of the patients of this or that physician. 

 In the course of a generation, more or less, physicians 

 themselves are hable to get tired of a practice which 

 has so little effect upon the average movement of vital 

 decomposition. Then they are ready for a change, 

 even if it were back again to a method which has 

 already been tried, and found wanting. 



Our practitioners, or many of them, have got back to 



