530 
THE ART OF PRESCRIBING 
of exciting causes, it w ill fail to produce any apparent dis- 
turbance of the general health. But animals with such 
inherent defects are always predisposed to disease. In- 
fluences which are harmless in others often produce in them 
serious and irremediable disease. Thus, ordinary w T ork causes 
spavins or curbs in horses with badly-formed hocks ; a slight 
exposure to cold brings on phthisis in a cow of consumptive 
diathesis ; simple engorgement of the stomach causes an 
attack of ophthalmia in a subject predisposed to it. Hence, 
an animal having a hereditary tendency to disease labours 
under many disadvantages, and his health, and even his life, 
are in constant jeopardy. He is always liable to suffer from 
slight and temporary errors in diet and regimen, and bears 
about with him from birth an ill-fated inheritance which 
affords a congenial soil for the reception and development 
of disease, and is transmitted to his posterity unimpaired in 
pow r er, and undiminished in extent. 
{To be continued .) 
THE ART OF PRESCRIBING IN ITS RELATION TO 
GENERAL PRACTICE. 
When the philosopher said, that “ God has not been so 
sparing to men to make them barely tw o-legged creatures, 
and left it to Aristotle to make them rational,” he meant 
that mankind possess a native faculty to use their reason 
w ithout being instructed in methods of syllogising, and that 
the shepherd has no need of the courtly arts of ratiocination 
to teach him that 66 the property of rain is to w r et, and fire to 
burn ; and that he that w 7 ants money, means, and content, is 
without three good friends.” Now, if Touchstone had 
lived in this golden age of quackery, w e think he must have 
included the clown’s way of dealing with sham physic among 
his “ Instances” of “ Natural Philosophy.” 
We are acquainted with nothing in the whole history of 
our science more striking than this fact, which is known to 
every parish doctor in the realm — that not only are all forms 
of spurious medicine dependent on the educated and wealthy 
for their support, but that if any board of guardians in 
England were to attempt to condemn their poor to the super- 
vision of a professed disciple of Mesmer, Hahnemann, or any 
other heretic, the serfs of the soil w r ould rise to a man, and 
resist the abominable fraud. With this preamble, w e pro- 
ceed to the main points of our argument. 
It has been frequently said, that our forefathers brought 
