438 | Is Medicine a Scrence ? 
- medical science, and that, by that inquiry shall be collected 
all the medical facts which can be procured from whatever 
source. 
In a late number our great contemporary reviewed a"new 
work by Mr. Skey, on what he calls “The Tonic Treat- 
ment of Disease,’ and in its remarks observed that a man 
- ought to be his own physician at forty. We heartilywish 
that so desirable a result could be brought about ; but we 
. fear that Mr. Skey’s book is not likely to help us to achieve 
so desirable a result, he after declaiming justly against;the 
evils of modern medicine holds up as the panacea for 
disease what are called tonics, “the chief of which is wine.” 
Thus he reduces the art of medicine to one word “jwine.” 
We suspect Mr. Skey’s ideas, medical and scientific, are of 
very limited range, and that he is not destined to be the 
great Pioneer of Medical Reform. 
We were thus well prepared by our great contemporary, 
when a little pamphlet, entitled, “Observations on the 
Treatment of Consumption, and other Diseases of the 
Chest, by W. MacOubrey, M.D., 60 Burton Crescent, came 
- into our hands, announcing the bold truth that there are in 
Nature agents which have the power to cure disease by a 
- specific action, and most obviously exemplified in con- 
sumption, bronchitis, and other diseases of the chest. His 
theory or statement is supported by such powerful facts 
new to us, that we think we cannot do better than give 
them in his own words :— 
“The total failure of the ordinary treatment of pulmo- 
nary complaints, and especially consumption, by the prac- 
titioners of every school of medicine, is long patent to the 
world; as well as the inability to devise any new and 
effective remedy, by the numerous authors who have 
written with such strange sameness, on this terrible scourge, 
which carries off, perhaps, a third of those who die in our 
country. ‘ 
“Tf we except,” says Dr. Copland, “the recent employ- 
ment of cod-liver oil in Phthisis, in what, it may be asked, 
has the treatment of this disease been advanced since the 
appearance of the works of Bennet, by the voluminous 
writings of specialists and stethoscopists in recent times ? 
(“ Dict. of Pract. Med. III. 1,127.”) 
“Yet there have been at all times facts obvious and un- 
doubted sufficient to have pointed out, not only the cura- 
bility of the disease, but to some extent the mode of pro- 
cedure. It is well known that certain conditions of the 
