quantity purchased, and the purpose for which it is intended, shall forfeit a sum not exceeding five pounds, to be recoverable as any penalty imposed by this Act."

This clause, with the exception of the words printed in italics, exists in the Manchester Local Act, which has been for some time in force, and the addition was made for the purpose of more effectually checking accidents from poison. But the Chemists of Stockport perceiving that this general denunciation of poisons would include all active medicinal substances, and thus interfere seriously with their ordinary business, remonstrated against the alteration.

Nearly all the preparations of mercury, lead, copper, antimony, zinc, and iron, narcotic extracts, tinctures and syrups, drastic purgatives, mineral and vegetable acids, alkalies, preparations of iodine, the vegetable alkaloids-in fact, nine-tenths of the Materia Medicaare poisons more or less deadly when taken in excessive doses. If therefore the above law were to pass, the Chemist would be liable to constant annoyance, since the conscience of the informers would be left to decide which of these articles should be considered poisons in the operation of the Act. In reply to this objection, which was urged by the Chemists of Stockport, it was stated that the Act would be interpreted and administered with due moderation, common informers having no power under it, and the object being to protect the public without obstructing the general business of the Chemist. This would probably be the case so long as the framers of the Act continued to administer it; but experience has shown that when the working of Acts of Parliament comes into fresh hands, the precise words become the law, while the original intention is forgotten. Supposing an ingenious logician to come into office, he might soon discover a field in which to display his talent; and taking a work on toxicology as his textbook, might extend the operation of the Act to all substances therein mentioned, which would include the bulk of the Materia Medica.

Consequently the above answer to the objection was not considered satisfactory, and the subject was referred to the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society, who fully concurred with their brethren at Stockport in the opinion, that the clause, with the additional words, was objectionable on principle.

Application was made on behalf of the Society to Mr. Cobden, whose name stands first on the Bill, and that gentleman, on hearing the case represented, admitted the validity of the objection, and referred the matter to Mr. Coppock, the Parliamentary Agent. After a little correspondence, the promoters of the Bill consented to withdraw the objectionable words, leaving the clause as it stands in the Manchester Local Act.

THE PRIVILEGES OF QUACKS.

THE Quack is a privileged man. He is subject to no law either human or divine: he bids defiance alike to the laws of nature and the rules of any known or recognised art: he professes to have a system of his own, deduced from innumerable observations and extensive experience, by a method of reasoning peculiar to his own genius. The most essential requisite in the system is originality;-it must differ from all others, and should be a compound of a certain amount of truth with an indefinite quantity of twaddle. The great art consists in adjusting the proportions of these ingredients so as to suit the capacity of each patient, and for this purpose a knowledge of human nature is particularly necessary. Some persons may swallow the whole system at once, others must be brought to it by degrees, being more disposed to think for themselves, and to take for granted no more than they can digest, like a man who swallows the oyster, rejecting the shell. For such persons the shell must be pounded and administered by small portions at a time; for until the whole oyster is swallowed, or in other words, until the patient has implicit reliance on the mysterious efficacy of the entire system, he will

not be tractable.

The chief requisite in the quack is impudence. He must possess the faculty of stating what is incredible with the air of a person who actually believes what he says; and must have the tact to let down his dupe gently from the heights of astonishment to the abyss of blind credulity.

The first thing to be done, therefore, is to gain the full confidence of the patient by citing a few appropriate and wholesome maxims, distorted more or less to suit the particular system, which is bolstered up with a list of wonderful cures, ingeniously contrasted with another list of deaths and disasters under other systems. This primary object effected--the patient being reduced to a state of blind reliance and implicit docility-the quack possesses an advantage not always enjoyed by the regular practitioner. Whatever orders he gives are rigidly obeyed. If he directs the patient to go to bed at ten o'clock, instead of two in the morning, to rise at seven and walk for an hour before breakfast, to drink one glass of wine at dinner, or none at all, instead of a bottle, to live on beef and mutton, abstaining from unwholesome dishes, to bring about, in fact, an entire revolution in his artificial habits of life, these orders will be observed with the most scrupulous attention. In addition to such regulations, which may be considered the "truth" of the system, but which of themselves would not appear sufficiently important to awaken the requisite amount of

faith, some novelty must be resorted to as a means of amusing the patient and completing the charm of the system. A globule of sugar must be placed on the tongue (like a pinch of salt on a bird's tail), or certain ablutions must be performed (a very wholesome practice within due bounds), or some quack medicine must be swallowed (the nature of which is known only to the inventor), frictions, shampooing, or other auxiliaries, according to the nature of the system, form a part of the treatment, and share the credit if relief be obtained. The quack need not be deeply versed in medical knowledge. The word diagnosis is not in his dictionary, and it is of little moment to him what is the name of the disorder. But his forte is in prognosis, and he classifies patients into curable and incurable. The former are such as are not obviously suffering from any serious or organic disease; the latter he is careful to avoid if possible, or, when requisite, he sends them to a distance for change of air, and thus escapes the responsibility.

In some of the water-cure establishments, a leading regulation is to the effect that no remedy but water is allowed; and any patients who may be dissatisfied without taking medicine are respectfully requested to leave the establishment. This is an excellent method of weeding the establishment of bad cases, and increasing the average number of cures, by retaining only such persons as require no medicine, but merely a change in their habits of living; and for such persons a well regulated boarding-house, with facilities for bathing, is a decided advantage.

The quack may occasionally make a mistake and undertake the cure of a patient whose malady is more serious than he expected. In this case, he attributes the failure of his system to some accidental omission in the performance of his prescribed routine of treatment. If he undertakes (as some quacks are in the habit of doing) to return the money unless a cure be effected, he is generally safe, for if the patient recovers he has no claim, if he dies he never asks for his money, and if he lingers on without making much progress, some plausible excuses or explanations are invented for the purpose of throwing the blame upon himself.

The medical practitioner does not enjoy these advantages. He is considered to be a reasonable man, and he treats his patients like reasonable beings: he prescribes what he thinks likely to afford relief, whether in the form of medicine, diet, mode of living, or other directions applicable to the particular case. Unfortunately the practice of remunerating Apothecaries in proportion to the quantity of medicine administered, has tended to give an undue importance to this part of the treatment, and patients are apt to imagine that if they take the medicine regularly, the other orders of the doctor are secondary in importance. It is inconvenient to

give up the ordinary recreations and amusements of society, late hours, the indulgence of the table, and other luxuries; and unless a patient be so ill as to be confined to his room, he is constantly tempted to deviate in some respects from the routine prescribed. He considers the doctor responsible. He has taken his medicine, and if he has indulged in an extra glass of wine, or curtailed his rest by later hours than his doctor allows, this is what he has often done before, and he scarcely thinks the circumstance worth mentioning. The Physician has no new and mysterious system to fall back upon, no asylum in which to watch the movements of his patients, and presuming upon the supposition that the patient knows better than to violate his instructions, his cross-examination is less severe than that of the quack, and while he is exerting his whole skill and experience, all his care may be frustrated.

Supposing this to be the case, and the patient, being discouraged at the result of his own imprudence, is recommended to try some new system. He goes to Baden-Baden, or to Graeffenberg, or perchance to some similar establishment in his own country, His habits of life are changed; he is induced to attend to advice which he disregarded when given by his regular medical attendant, and by avoiding what was probably the chief cause of his malady, his health is improved.

Some persons are in the habit of taking a large quantity of medicine without medical advice. They keep a debtor and creditor account with their stomachs, and after any excess or imprudence in diet, take a counteracting dose. When at fault they consult a doctor, forgetting probably to mention their prophylactic propensity. It is not surprising that the constitution is sometimes injured by such habits, which are allowed to continue because they are not known to prevail. But if a patient under these circumstances happen to consult a homoeopathist, the evil is remedied without any direct opposition to the prevailing prejudice for medicine is administered as usual, while the dose is reduced to a shadow, and the doctor will only attend on condition that certain rules in diet and habits of life are observed, which he represents as being requisite in order to ensure the proper effect of the globules.

Medicine, like fire, is a good friend but a bad enemy. When injudiciously indulged in, it does mischief, which injures the profession by giving the quack an opportunity of rectifying the evil by the substitution of an imaginary remedy, amusing the patient without producing any other effect. To this circumstance, aided by proper attention to diet, may be attributed the credit homoeopathy has acquired among some persons of lively imagination.

So much for what may be called anti-pharmaceutical quackery,

which is rather of a high order, being patronized by the nobility and gentry. Ordinary quacks prefer the Apothecaries system; that is to say, they remunerate themselves by the sale of medicines. Of this class "Dr." Morison was a star, and the extent to which he carried purgation was frightful. In quackery one extreme answers as well as the other, and the more astounding the theory and practice inculcated, the more completely the reason of the dupe is paralysed. We have observed that there are some persons who habitually take too much medicine, there are others again who take none at all, or pay so little attention to the state of their alimentary canal, that they suffer a variety of ailments in consequence. While the former are benefited by homœopathy, the latter find relief in the system of Morison and Co., which is nothing more than Abernethy's hobby ridden to death. Morison's range of dose being from one pill to thirty, each patient could act according to his amount of faith or constipation, and thus in some cases we hear of wonderful cures having been effected, while in others, where faith was in excess, the result was fatal. The quack himself being concerned merely as the maker and vender, managed in general to escape direct responsibility, while those who administered his panacea to patients who died in consequence, were convicted of manslaughter.

This

St. John Long depended for his success on the principle of counter-irritation, and reduced to a general law a line of treatment adopted by medical men only in appropriate cases. generalization constituted the novelty of his theory, and the recklessness with which he carried it out led to its downfall. He was not satisfied with cure, but was professor of prevention ; and in some cases prevented death from consumption by a summary process leading to the same result, before the symptoms of consumption had manifested themselves. Although convicted of manslaughter, his friends supported him to the last, and a splendid monument was erected to his memory in the cemetery at Kensall Green.