94 
EDITORIAL. 
practitioners  who  prefer  the  prescription  of  others  to  the  trouble  of  adapt- 
ing medicines  themselves. 
Brief  Expositions  of  Rational  Medicine,  to  which  is  prefixed  the  Paradise 
of  Doctors,  a  Fable.  By  Jacob  Bigelow,  'M.  D.,  late  President  of  the 
Massachusetts  Medical  Society.  Boston :  Phillips,  Sampson  &  Co.  1858. 
pp.  169,  12mo. 
This  little  pamphlet  is  an  attempt  in  the  same  direction  as  the  work  of 
Sir  John  Forbes,  noticed  in  our  last  number,  11  Nature  and  Art  in  the  Cure 
of  Disease."  Dr.  Bigelow  has  evidently  lost  his  early  faith  in  the  Materia 
Medica,  and  is  now  an  advocate  of  "  Rational  Medicine,"  which  means 
much  or  little,  according  to  who  is  the  exponent  of  its  doctrines  in  his  daily 
practice.  With  some  it  is  practically  a  sort  of  medical  atheism,  where 
lost  faith  in  the  curative  powers  of  medicine  is  not  replaced  by  any  decided 
system  of  action  as  a  substitute.  In  others,  it  is  merely  placing  Drugs  in 
a  subordinate  position,  and  resorting  to  their  aid  at  the  proper  moment, 
when  the  recuperative  powers  of  the  system  need  a  helper.  The  latter  is 
really  the  practice  of  a  large  number  of  able  practitioners,  who  see  in  their 
course,  not  a  new  system  of  u  Rational  Medicine,"  but  that  safe  middle 
path,  which  enables  the  physician  to  resort  to  those  means,  be  they  natural 
or  artificial,  which  meet  the  case  in  hand. 
The  Doctor's  fable  is  amusing,  but  rather  verbose,  and,  as  a  piece  of 
pleasantry,  lacks  spice  and  animation,  and  might  have  been  better  said ; 
nevertheless  its  moral  points  to  the  subject  following  it. 
Physician's  Handbook  of  Practice  for  1859.  By  William  Elmer,  M.  D. 
New  York  :  M.  A.Townsend  &  Co.,  No.  377  Broadway,  1859. 
We  called  altention  last  year  to  this  useful  little  medical  annual,  intended 
to  facilitate  the  process  of  recording  daily  visits,  obstetric  and  surgical  cases, 
etc.  in  a  systematic  manner.  Attached  to  the  Diary  blanks,  and  preceding 
them,  is  a  very  much  condensed  classification  of  diseases,  and  list  of  the 
materia  medica,  with  pharmaceutical  preparations,  intended  to  revive  the 
memory  in  the  course  of  daily  practice,  occupying  about  one  hundred  pages. 
Its  usefulness  as  a  diary  addresses  itself  to  every  physician,  and  its  printed 
matter  to  those  whose  stock  of  ready  knowledge  needs  a  little  aid  during 
their  daily  routine. 
