120 PEOSB HAOjIETJTICS. 



observed that these remedies, to succeed, must be ap- 

 plied before gangrene has supervened, for in that case the 

 only certain cure is,' — not, reader, excision, nor the po- 

 tential nor actual cautery — but 'to rub the mangled 

 flesh with a compost of the same fish in vinegar, and 

 then to bind tight over the gangrened spot the head of 

 a salted mullet ! ' We sometimes speculate, in turning 

 over the pages of effete old nostrums, (now, thanks to a 

 much more generally diffused knowledge, repudiated 

 even by intelligent irregulars,) what fees doctors received 

 in days of yore for such prescriptions, and marvel how 

 they had the face to take any. Even Celsus, whose 

 good sense and Latioity were alike above suspicion be- 

 fore they were complimented by Dr. Parr, is anything 

 but 'par uegotiis' in his medical formularies. Now 

 there is not an apothecary's lad preparing to pass ' the 

 Hall ' (and plucked, sometimes, because he is not able 

 to translate his Celsus) who would not certainly be 

 plucked, and deserve it too, were he to exhibit to the 

 examiners such prescriptions for pill, draught, or Unctus 

 as the Roman doctor, 'more majorum,' put together. 

 But there is no need to go so far back : all om- greatest 

 improvements here are scarcely a century old. Let us 

 only take up a pharmacopoeia, or an angler's guide, of 

 that period, and cast an eye over the strange recipes 

 adopted by the practitioners of the healing and piscatory 

 arts, for the cm"e of fevers and the catching of fish, and 

 he must be fond of paradox, and a very determined ' lau- 

 dator temporis acti ' indeed, who would not admit that 

 the world in the course of the last century has gone 

 very much ahead, and that medicine has kept pace with 

 the world. 



