country, and the well-being of his fellow subjects, must feel, shame, horror, and indignation, at the recital. Continue, Gentlemen, to expose these enormities, with the same spirit with which you have commenced the attack, and the public will owe you indelible obligations. Every man, who is able, will, no doubt, think it a duty to aid you in the humane undertaking; and, as my first share of the tribute, the following remarks, if should think them not unworthy of a place in your next number, are heartily at your service.

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That, in an enlightened age, like the present, or, indeed, in any age, a government should be found thoughtlessly to connive at practices, which must annually prove fatal to thousands of its subjects, for the sake of the pitiful revenue which can arise from a few stamps used for quack medicines, is a phenomenon that may very naturally be wondered at, but cannot, with common temper, be reasoned upon, by any one alive to the ordinary feelings of humanity. It would require the coolness of a treasury clerk, to enter into the subject as a matter of political calculation.

But while we applaud the zeal with which you expose nostrums, and nostrum-mongers, in the detail, it is fitting that so dreadful a calamity should be traced to its hidden and polluted sources; that the cause of the disease should be

investigated, and the appropriate remedy pointed out. The existence of empiricism, in every department, it is obvious, must be owing to a deficiency of science in that department; and that either there exists, in this respect, a deplorable deficiency in medicine, in this country; or that, if medical science does exist, it is repressed or shackled by the baneful influence of monopoly, I am sorry to think there will be no great difficulty in proving. In the first place, does science exist in medicine? Let us inquire among the principal medical body in the metropolis, the Royal College of Physicians of London. I would ask the learned president of that learned body, (and I think it behoves him to give some explanation to the public on this head,) whether there exists a single fundamental principle, or principles, in medicine, respecting which he and his colleagues have a general agreement? Can they explain the nature of a single disease? Have they a set of fixed or established rules for the cure of any malady? In fine, do they know how any one agent in nature produces its effects, whether noxious or salutary, on the living body? I do not mean the modus operandi of agents; for that, being above the reach of the human capacity, is not expected to be known to the College. We shall be content if they will explain in what manner the most ordinary phenomena of living

bodies succeed the application of external powers. If they cannot do any, or all, of these things, how can they pretend that medicine is any thing else, in their hands, than a conjectural art? But to examine a candidate, respecting his fitness to practise an art that is merely conjectural, implies a contradiction that will require all the sagacity of the College of Physicians to reconcile. To me it appears, that, where there are no established principles, the hypothesis of the schools cannot enable a person to guess right; and that no man can learn to conjecture well, in the cure of diseases, but from personal experience ;-not that species of experience, indeed, which consists in the mere routine of prescribing, as an ass, from habit, goes round in a mill; but that species of experience, which, to the evidence of facts, unites contemplation and inference. The College, then, it would appear, have no principles in common, unless they are kept au secret, like their own byelaws, which are only occasionally brought to light, to frighten offenders. If there be any, produce them. I am ready to meet you, Sir Lucas, not anonymously, but as a fair and avowed antagonist to the monopoly of which you are the existing chief; and, let me add, to your recent attempts, in that capacity, at usurping powers which do not of right belong to you. If you will not, after this invitation, pro duce a principle, or principles, in which you and

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your colleagues agree, and which may le justly considered as forming a body of medical science, the public will have a right to conclude, and they will infallibly conclude, that you cannot produce them. Nay, I believe it is not pretended by the College themselves that they possess any prin. ciples, unless the doctrines, contained in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, the Therapeutics of Galen, or the first of the first of Avicenna, be entitled to that appellation. I shall, in another place, inquire how far they deserve to be so considered. They are, however, with perhaps those of some other ancient authors, the only avowed medical doctrines, which the College have thought proper to employ in the examination of candidates, as a test of medical fitness. But I beg pardon; it is not the explanation or application of these doctrines that is required, so much as the translation of certain paragraphs, and that too with the accent of Oxford or Cambridge exclusively, from the Greek and Latin (I know not whether the College deign to peruse the Arabic originals) of the ancient authors.-Now every rational man will, I think, be apt to consider so preposterous a test of medical fitness, as a very fit cloak for medical ignorance; and he cannot consider it in any other point of view. It would be infinitely less absurd, for there are also, no doubt, ancient medical authors in those languages, to

conduct examinations in the Sanscrit, Hebrew, or Celtic; for, among the Candidates, there might possibly be, from time to time, some learned Asiatics, Jews, and Highlanders, capable of speaking their native tongue with more purity than any modern can be expected to speak Greek or Latin; and these languages, if the English be not a fit vehicle for science, might, with the same ease, be learnt by others at school. But the fact is, that the mummery of an examination in any dead, or foreign language, is, at this time of day, worthy of being considered not simply a proof of ignorance in a particular department, but of general perverseness and folly, when it is not the result of evil design. The American physicians long ago adopted the rational, and only rational, method of examining medical candidates in their mother tongue, and lately the Portuguese.

It will be expected from the College, unless they should think themselves out of the reach of public censure, that they should not only give 'an explanation of their medical principles, if they pretend to have any, but that they should assign their reasons for continuing the apparent farce of examining in the dead languages, in which neither themselves, nor the candidates, can be supposed able to explain, with fluency and accuracy, the opinions they entertain. They will in vain