314 Medicine, 



Next in importance to Medical Schools and So" 

 cietiesy are the Medical JoitrnalSy and other peri- 

 odical publications, intended to promote the sci- 

 encCipf medicine, which distinguished the last age. 

 It is believed that the honour of giving birth to this 

 species of publication belongs to the century under 

 review. At an early period of it, the Transactions 

 of medical societies, and the collections of Obser- 

 'Nations and Inquiries on the various branches of 

 the healing art, began to make their appearance, 

 and to awaken the minds of practitioners. Among 

 the regular Journals in the English language, ex- 

 clusively devoted to this department of knov/ledge, 

 the Medical Commentaries of Dr. Duncan, of 

 Edinburgh, hold the first place, both with respect 

 to time and merit. This work was succeeded by 

 the Annals of Medicine^ by the same gentleman, 

 assisted by his son. Within the few last years 

 of the century, works of this kind have greatly 

 multiplied, not only in Great-Britain, but also in 

 many other parts of the learned world. The great 

 utility of these publications is unquestionable. The 

 number of important hints which they have pro- 

 posed, of new remedies which they have sug- 

 gested, and of new paths of inquiry which they 

 have opened, is too great to be reckoned. *' It 

 " is no exaggeration," says a learned American 

 physician, " to assert, that the medical facts and 

 ^^ observations which have been published in the 

 '^ eighteenth century, have done more towards ex- 

 *' plaining the functions, and curing the diseases 

 *' of the human body, than all that remained on 

 " record, for many, perhaps for all the centuries 

 *' that had preceded since the creation."^ 



The establishment of numerous and extensive 

 Hospitals, by which the eighteenth century is emi* 



q Ramsay's Revleio of the Improvemsnts of ^idUvie, &c. p. l6, 17* 



