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few persons, the prejudices against the English Rhubarb are many, and 
deeply rooted; and to this source most of them may be traced. Nor is this 
very wonderful; for to entertain high expectations of Rhubarb prematurely 
taken up, is no less extravagant, than to suppose the capacity of a child 
equal to that of an adult: yet hitherto our market has been a stranger to any 
other than such a commodity. 
That I never expected to introduce it into general practice without 
opposition, is evident from my last papers in 1708; for I there remarked, 
that very probably, before this could be effected, certain difficulties must be 
overcome, the principal of which I apprehended to be an almost universal 
prepossession in favour of foreign commodities. Moderation on the part of 
the cultivator in the regulation of his prices, and an unwearied attention to 
its quality, are the only means likely to produce a counteraction. To great 
attention to these points I attribute all my success. Mere recommendation 
ought ever, in such a business as this, to be placed out of the question. If 
the article will not bear the tests of examination and trial, It should not be 
indebted to any thing else. 
Whenever I have submitted any specimens to public examination, at an 
hospital or elsewhere, my constant language has been, 6 I have no wish but 
that they may rise or fall according to their own intrinsic merit or demerit; 
and if worthy of approbation, by this means induce their general adoption. 
That this being, no doubt, the ultimate object of the Society of Arts, who 
have thought proper to honour me with several distinctions, I feel myself 
impelled to forward it to the utmost, and not remain contented with its mere 
cultivation.’ I have proceeded to state the great expence this country incurs 
by so large an importation, and on this account urged its general adoption, 
in order to lessen the expence on the score of duty. That although I am 
influenced by such motives, and many others, yet my own individual interest 
I have at the same time fairly acknowledged to be among the number; and 
I have concluded with expressing an hope, that while pleading the general, 
as well as my own particular cause, perhaps the benefit of such institutions 
may be the necessary consequence of introducing a valuable and efficacious 
medicine, at a comparatively trifling expence. I have never yet made this 
appeal in vain; and the Society will, I dare say, receive with much satisfac¬ 
tion the intelligence that Rhubarb of English growth is now used at Guy’s 
(I mention the hospitals in the order of its introduction), St. Thomas’s, and 
