Early Sanitary Work. 37 



and essays, separate or mixed, sounding much like the 

 style of the ' Spectator ' at times without its exquisite 

 polish, and of ' ^Esop's Fables ' at other times without their 

 telling terseness. A style admirable in idea because it 

 mixes the useful and the pleasant, but in this case carried 

 out with too much formality of language to suit children, 

 and too much youth of knowledge to suit those who are 

 grown older. The essays cannot be called highly success- 

 ful, but indicate a refined soul. 



An exception may be made of the ' Medical Ethics ' of 

 Dr. Percival, which can be treated of only by those who 

 have read similar previous works, and this has not been 

 done by the present writer, unless we consider the ' Religio 

 Medici ' of Sir Thomas Brown to belong to them. There 

 is no attempt in Dr. Percival's book to prove himself the 

 wisest man under the sun and possessed of every virtue, 

 but he shows himself a wise and a practical man, as his 

 position in Manchester might be expected to prove him ; 

 and he gives rules for the behaviour of medical men 

 towards their patients and each other which are dictated 

 by the highest feelings and the most refined perception 

 and taste. So far as these are concerned, it seems scarcely 

 possible to go beyond Dr. Percival, and we could imagine 

 this treatise to be a code of morals and manners to all suc- 

 ceeding generations. If there be a fault, it is one which 

 naturally arises out of the difficulty of keeping out all 

 feelings of envy and jealousy from the minds of profes- 

 sional men. There is thus produced a code of etiquette 

 towards each, which does not always sufficiently take into 

 consideration the necessities of the patient. 1 In this way 



1 Since this was written a remarkable instance arose in the case of Lord 

 Beaconsfield, where one man would rather keep some formal habit than do his 



