morbid conditions impair the energies, and others are incompatible with the duration of life. But what 
avails it that the physician can trace by symptoms the successive stages of disorganization, as they proceed 
in structures concealed from view? what avails it that the surgeon can proclaim the appearance of such 
morbid •’Iterations long before dissection unfolds them to the light? what avails it that both can foretell the 
impairment or destruction of vital parts, without they can at the same time learn to check the ravages of dis- 
ease, and either to alleviate the sufferings of the patient or to afford him a perfect cure ? Without such an 
application of this art, the means of obtaining it would to many be repulsive, and the science itself not a blessing, 
but a bane; as the foreknowledge of ills that could not be relieved would but aggravate the misery man is 
called on to endure. But such is not the opprobrium of our useful, and hence noble arts; for the theory 
of physic is founded on experience, and the benefits of its practice who can venture to deny ! As sciences 
medicine and surgery find few their equals; and as arts they are excelled by none. 
A circumstance which still shrouds medicine in mystery, must have been formely much more perplexing 
than we find it now. Even, however, in the present day, it frequently involves the principles of our practice 
in obscurity ; and hence some persons, ignorant of how many cases there are in which it approaches de- 
monstration, have not scrupled to call physic a conjectural science ; to define its object to be the calculation 
of chances, and its decision the balance of probabilities. I, of course, allude to the acknowledged difficulty 
of determining how far a cure should be attributed to the renovating powers of life, and how far to the re- 
medial agents which art employs: for some diseases, and especially in some constitutions, will disappear 
not only without, but even in spite of the physician ; whilst others, in other persons, or even in the same 
person at other times, not the most consummate skill can cure. Of this, the records of legitimate practice 
would afford us abundant illustrations; but the empirical artifices of the present day form still more familiar 
examples: to these I shall not particularly allude : some will long be notorious beacons. 
From these sources of error, many useless, many nauseous, and not a few noxious, agents have, from 
time to time been introduced, several have enjoyed an ill-earned fame; while some really efficient medicines 
have as undeservedly fallen into disrepute. Hence, likewise can we account for many of those superstitious 
rites, anciently so mixed up with medicine as to have been esteemed an essential part thereof. Few persons 
will take the trouble of distinguishing the post from the propter ; and, even to those who would, the power 
is oft-times wanting. A mind, patient in observation, and well disciplined to distinguish truth from error, 
does not commonly coexist with that instinct (shall I call it almost blind instinct,) for generalization, by 
which theories are planned, and systems raised. Allow an example to illustrate this abstract proposition. 
Achilles, writes the poet, escaped unhurt though long exposed to all a warrior’s danger, (and so did 
others of the Grecian force, and so do many others in every hostile meeting;) Achilles at last was slain by 
an arrow which transfixed his heel, (and so have many others fallen by wounds in some especial parts, 
whether in the head, the hand, the heel, for weapons to each victim are not omnipresent ;) but Achilles had 
been bathed by Thetis, (and so by most parents have their sons been washed ;) yet it is fabled that the heel 
by which his mother held him was the only part unwetted ; that heel it is said was pierced : and hence arose 
the fame of the antivulneriferous waters of the Styx. “Post ergo propter balneum salus.” 
Again, in times of general sickness, the Romans, with solemnity elected a Dictator, for the especial 
purpose (and that alone) of driving a nail into the temple of Jupiter, and when afterwards the pestilence de- 
creased, post ergo propter malleum salus. 
Just as, at the present time, in countries where the plague prevails, an angel is believed to cast a drop 
of water on the earth, on the festival of St. John, after which day the plague is stayed, and to which the 
restoration of salubrity is attributed, rather than to the actual cause, viz. the great increase of heat that then 
ensues, and which is incompatible with its duration. 
Again, honey was employed in ancient times, as still it is, as a useful application to relieve aphthous 
eruptions in the mouth and fauces; but then the relief obtained was attributed not immediately to the mean 
employed, but intermediately to an extraneous coincidence foreign to its nature, and only therewith for- 
tuitously connected; i. e. the cure was ascribed by Soranus, who records a case in point, not to the honey, 
as honey, but to the accidental circumstance of that honey, which wrought the cure he mentions, having 
been procured from bees that had hived near Hippocrates’ tomb. 
Thus when men prescribed medicines, of the properties of which there was little known, for diseases, of 
the pathology of which they knew much less, it cannot be surprising that, although sometimes, perchance, they 
might assist recovery, more frequently they would do no good ; and not uncommonly they would do much 
harm. Still, such was the perverseness of superstition, such the obtuseness of her votaries, that, whenever 
recovery ensued after the administration of any remedial means, were it either independant, or even in spite, 
of its effects, the cure was immediately attributed thereto; and when, as oftentimes occurred in cases of real 
disease, (although many slight or suppositious ailments would occasionally disappear during the exhibition,) 
it failed to cure or to relieve, some trifling variation in attendant circumstances, such as the mode or hour 
of administration or collection, or some other trifling irregularity, not only foreign but impertinent to the 
question, was referred to as the source of failure: and hence arose many of those superstitious rites which 
figure so strangely in the medical records of antiquity.” 
