EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
163 
before us in the acquirement of a knowledge of therapeutics, 
with no fear of the following scene being re-enacted; al¬ 
though we energetically denounce an approach even to the 
semblance of cruelty, or the giving of unnecessary pain, in 
the experiments instituted. 
Erasmus once lay in a roadside alehouse, sick of a malady 
which was little understood. The pundits of the spatula 
and lancet gathered about the bed of the unknown patient, 
and wrangled in pompous Latin over the method of cure to 
be adopted. Presently a novel and desperate course was 
propounded, and agreed upon. “ Experimentum fiat in vili 
corpore ” cried the chorus of Galens; “let us, by all means, 
try the thing upon this fellow’s carcase.” The best Latin 
scholar of his age, however, had listened to the conversation, 
and rapped out a Roman phrase of dissent which scattered 
his physicians. 
We would not be thought to imply by these observations 
that nothing has as yet been done. Were we to, we should 
give the lie to our own pages. But while much has been 
done, much still remains to be done. We should be con¬ 
versant with the effects produced by certain agents, both 
in sickness and in health, as the former oft modifies, if it 
does not determine their action. Our Materia Medica is 
not large, nor need it be; nevertheless the missiles to com¬ 
bat with the enemy should be well chosen, and have stood 
the test, or the victory mav be lost. 
“ In regard of popular feeling,” says Dr. Reynolds, “ the community may 
be divided into three classes. First, there are those who believe in the 
orthodox practitioners, who call things by old names, believe in fever, in¬ 
flammation, boils, gout, consumption and other maladies ; respect fervently 
leeches, blisters, black draughts, blue pill, and colocynth; send for their 
doctors as soon as they are ill, do just exactly as they are bid, inquire simply 
whether .the liver is affected or the head, and are satisfied with what they 
term his c pronouncings/ 
“ Then there is another class, the sceptics and eclectics; people who 
believe that medicine is all a sham, and who never send for advice until 
they are frightened, because very bad. Sometimes they follow the advice 
that is given; but more often they do just the opposite. They treat the 
science as a farce altogether, speaking of it as uncertain and useless, and 
yet are so constantly wandering from one to another of its practitioners 
that they get no good at all; and while philosophically asserting that the 
art can do nothing, and that Nature must do everything by her own inflexi¬ 
ble laws, and irresistible operations, they yet growl at the practitioner for 
not accomplishing more than their own statements allow to be possible. 
“ This class is a large one, but not so large as the third, which consists 
of the extremely credulous, these latter being frequently a compound of 
