ANOMALOUS STATE OF MEDICAL LAW. 
533 
at the time, of those very mechanical arts at which we are, 
in our way, aiming a blow, when we seek to abandon the 
so-called servile offices which have hitherto been part and 
parcel of our art. 
The assumptions and vapid hypotheses of the philosophers 
of the middle ages were mainly due to their contempt of 
manual operations. They missed, by their neglect of ex- 
periment, the only path by which they could obtain a know- 
ledge of the real properties of objects ; and while they 
surveyed nature from their lofty position, and forged theo- 
ries to account for the causes of things, totally disregarding 
the more immediate investigation of effects , they founded a 
school of false philosophy. The workers of those menial 
arts which were permitted to survive the dignified sup- 
pression of such resources could not help adopting the 
speculative notions of their betters ; and thus arose, from the 
shadows of observation without patient experiment, the creed 
of the alchemists. 
We do not mean to say that the prospects of science will 
be absolutely forfeited by any radical reform in our pro- 
fessional manipulations ; but we do mean to assert (and we 
appeal to history for the truth of what we state) that the 
tendency of all systems which aim at separating the doc- 
trines of science from manual labour, is to give a wrong 
direction to the speculative mind ; and, if generally followed 
out in our case, seriously to cripple the usefulness of medi- 
cine . — Association Med . Jour,, 10 th June , 1853. 
ANOMALOUS STATE OF MEDICAL LAW. 
The case of Cary v. Napier is a curious illustration of the 
anomalies connected with the present state of medical law. 
The plaintiff, a duly-qualified surgeon, attended the defendant 
for relaxed uvula and enlarged tonsils. His charges appear 
to have been reasonable and just. No complaint was made 
of his want of skill Indeed ’the remedies which he ordered 
were successful. The defendant, as the judge well remarked, 
set up the* “ most ungracious and improper defence”; — that 
Mr. Cary was not entitled by law to practise medicine. Upon 
the solitary evidence of Dr. Thomas Smith, who regarded 
the case as “ strictly medical,” Mr. Cary was nonsuited. 
Now, in the first place, it is by no means clear, that the dis- 
ease for which Mr. Napier was successfully treated was not 
really a surgical one* Indeed, notwithstanding the dictum 
