MEM01B OF DB WIIUJHT. __ IT '■> 



deliver the responses he received with an air of dogma- 

 tism or self-sufficiency. On the contrary, with a be- 

 coming sense of what was due to his own character 

 and station, he had to contend through life against an 

 innate diffidence of manner and address, which, while 

 it retarded his own immediate advancement, has con- 

 tributed, in some degree, to curtail the credit which is 

 due to him as an original thinker, a bold and success- 

 ful experimentalist, and an accurate expositor of the 

 laws of nature. His practice partook of the simplicity 

 which characterises the great school in which he stu- 

 died. His remedies were few, but efficacious. A de- 

 termined enemy to every species of quackery, he la- 

 the suggestion of nature, prescribed large draughts of warm muddy 

 water, winch, either operating as an emetic, assisted in carrying off 

 the offensive matter, or, mixing with it in the stomach, corrected its 

 pernicious effects. It is also remarkable, that the meal obtained by- 

 grinding the roots of the bitter cassada, may be rendered perfectly 

 safe, and even salubrious, by repeatedly washing it in fresh supplies 

 of water, so as to separate the meal or solid part of the root from 

 the natural juices of the plant. And indeed it appears that the Ne- 

 groes of St Domingo make the meal thus purified into bread, and 

 use it as an ordinary article of food. 



Following the course of nature, Dr Wright made it a rule not 

 to eat of plants avoided by the lower animals; and, on the same 

 principle, when he observed a plant reputed to be poisonous to be 

 eaten freely by any family of the brute creation, lie concluded, a 

 priori, that the common prejudice was not well founded. The 

 fruit of the bead or hoop tree is rejected as poisonous by the Ne- 

 groes of Jamaica ; but observing it to be eaten greedily by the horse, 

 Dr Wright ascertained that it was equally safe for mankind ; a 

 singular illustration this of the relative value of brute instinct and 

 human reason. 



