any other disorder. All that is necessary is to assist nature to drive out the canker and putrefaction, which is the cause of the disease, by keeping the determining powers to the surface, in which case there will be no danger. The same manner of treatment should be used in this complaint as has been directed for the measles. The cankerrash, and all kinds of disease that a person is not liable to have but once, such as chicken-pox, swine-pox, &c. are from the same cause and must be treated in a similar manner."

CONSUMPTION.

"This complaint is generally caused by some acute disorder not being removed, and the patient being run down by the fashionable practice, until nature makes a compromise with disease, and the house becomes divided against itself. There is a constant warfare kept up between the inward heat and cold, the flesh wastes away in consequence of not digesting the food, the canker becomes seated on the stomach and bowels, and then takes hold of the lungs. When they get into this situation it is called a seated consumption, and is pronounced by the doctors to be incurable. I have had a great many cases of this kind and have in all of them, where there was life enough left to build upon, been able to effect a cure by my system of practice. The most important thing is to raise the inward heat and get a perspiration, clear the system of canker, and restore the digestive powers, so that food will nourish the body and keep up that heat on which life depends. This must be done by the regular course of medicine, as has been directed in all violent attacks of disease, and persevering in it till the cause is removed.

This complaint is called by the doctors a hectic fever, because they are subject to cold chills and hot flashes on the surface; but this is an error, for there is no fever about it; and this is the greatest difficulty— if there was it would have a crisis and nature would be able to drive out the cold and effect a cure; the only difficulty is to raise a fever, which must be done by such medicine as will raise and hold the inward heat till nature has the complete command, When the patient is very weak and low, they will have what is called cold sweats; the cause of this is not understood; the water that collects on the skin does not come through the pores, but it is attracted from the air in the room, which is warmer than the body, and condenses ou the surface; the same may be seen on the outside of a mug or tumbler on a hot day, when filled with cold water, which is from the same cause. It is of more importance to attend to the preventing of this complaint than to cure it. If people would make use of those means which I have recommended, and cure themselves of disease in its first stages, and avoid all poisonous drugs, there would never be a case of consumption or any other chronic disorder."

We shall for the present dismiss this artful demagogue and mischievous impostor, with the following reflections, in which every honorable and intelligent member of the Medical profession, must concur.

1. His success in acquiring popularity, is in no small degree attributable to his railings against the educated phy

sicians.

2. By presenting what he calls a system of principles, te those who cannot perceive their absurdity, he acquires their confidence.

3. Whatever may be found of physiology or pathology in his book, has been picked up from the popular works on medicine.

4. His remedies consist of plants long known to the profession; many of them now in use, and others rejected as inert after repeated trials. Even his boasted lobelia has been known and used as a medicine, by the physicians for 30 years.

5. The steam bath with the subsequent application of cold water, has been used in all ages and among all people. It is well known to be a favorite remedy with our North American Indians, from whom Thomson adopted his manner of applying it. Of all his remedies, this is perhaps at once the most harmless and the most efficacious.

6. Most of the medicines on which he relies, are active stimulants, and may, therefore, cure the diseases to which that class of remedies are adapted; while they produce the most fatal effects, in maladies of an inflammatory character, for whichthey are also invariably used. Of this, several examples have fallen under our own observation, and cases have been communicated to us from all quarters. Herein lies the abuse, which calls for the interposition of the faculty. If their friends and patients, while the delusion rages, will not listen to what they say, it is not the less their duty to speak. The consciousness of having rescued but a single credulous victim from his impending fate, should, with a physician of humanity, outweigh a thousand ungenerous insinuations against the motives which governed him.

7. There is nothing original, in the union of emetics, with sweating and heating medicines. From time immemorial, taking a vomit and then a composing draught, drinking hot tea, and bathing the feet in hot water, so as to take a good sweat, is a practice that has prevailed in the profession, and among the people. It was reserved for one Samuel Thomson

to take out a patent, for a clumsy and often dangerous method, of arriving at the very same result; and thus to become, in the eyes of the weak-minded and superstitious, one of the greatest geniuses and benefactors of the human race! Why does not some one get out a patent, for preventing the small pox by vaccinating on the nose, instead of the arm? It might be averred, that it would not, then, be necessary to repeat the operation every seven years; or oftener, if a man moved from one town to another. Such vaccinations would be as effectual as those in the arm, and could be referred to and published-not as testimony in favour of the Cow-pock, but in favour of inserting it in the end of the snout. Thus, in a short time, we should find half the community--(we mean half in point of numbers,) turning up their noses at their incredulous and bigotted brethren, who might prefer to have the carbuncle on their arms.

8. Intelligent and candid men, not of the medical profession, ought to be apprized, that the strong medicines are not confi. ned to the mineral kingdom; but that the greatest poisons are of vegetable origin, and the number not a few. Even prussic acid, the deadliest poison ever discovered, may be distilled from doctor Thomson's peach meats and cherry stones.

9. We might apply to the whole Thomsonian farrago of doctrines and recipies, the remark which Blumenbach is said to have made upon phrenology-"That which is true is not new, and that which is new is not true.'

10. Lastly, it is marvellous that intelligent men should not open their eyes to the real character of this quackery. It presents us with the very first example on record, of a patent for the practice of medicine. The profits of the patent right are in proportion to the number of individual patents, each 20 dollars, which can be sold. Now suppose an artful and unprincipled man, to purchase the liberty of vending this patent in the state of Ohio; and suppose that he should sell out the different counties, numbering 65 or 70, to as many cunning knaves, who are to become the retailers of the patent to the people;' and suppose that in this operation, they should sell only 20 patents in each county, to persons who

practice for money, we should have an aggregate for the state of about 1500! No education is necessary to qualify these 1500 persons for the practice, except enough to read Thomson's directions; they are not, in any case, responsible for the result, and have no professional character to support. In short, it is with them as with the patentees for counties and states, a matter of pecuniary speculation.

By the light of these facts no one can fail to perceive, what an immense influence is brought to bear upon the community in favor of this patent. It is, indeed, from first to last, not unlike the puffing of a new actor by the managers of the theatre or the circus, whose profits will be in proportion to the excite ment they can create in his favour. Was Thomson's patent revoked, his nostrums would speedily fall into disuse; because the motive which now exists for puffs and falsehoods, in their favour, would be destroyed. Being, then, upheld and disseminated by his patent, we cannot refrain from adding, that it is discreditable to our age and nation, that such patents should ever be issued. Indeed the whole practice of the government on this point is radically wrong, and should not be reformed, but renounced. No modification of it could confer on society so great a benefit as its total abolition.

Fifteen hundred knavish and hungry propagandists, in one great collusion! Why, they are more than enough to convince the people that doctor Thomson writes good English; or, even, to prove that his reverend commentator ought to be elected president of the American Temperance Society.

Such being the character of the system under review, we cannot forbear to express our surprise and sorrow, that it should have found a public advocate in the reverend author of the Fifteen Lectures. That a clergyman of reputed piety, learning, genius and eloquence, could be found to lend himself to the propagation of such stupid and dangerous quackeries, originating with one of the most illiterate and indolent men in society, could not have been anticipated: That he would labor to hide their deformities behind the veil of his

polished elocution, is a prostitution of his talents: That he could stand up and decry a profession, which has long been closely associated with his own; declaim against regular studies; and level the battering ram of his wit at a superstructure, erected by ages of toil in the dearest interests of humanity, does little credit to his feelings: That he would ransack encyclopædias and digests, to acquire a smattering of medical theories, and artfully interweave it with the nonsense of a ridiculous, but mischievous empyricism, gives but poor indication of his rectitude: That he should garnish the whole with texts of scripture, and attempt to give to heresy in medicine, a dangerous passport to the confidence of the religious community, by blending it with sentiments of devotion, argues still less for his piety:-and yet all this and more has been done by the reverend author before us.

Let us look at a few specimens:

"Animal life, as it operates on the human body in health and in disease, has been considered the primary and grand object of the attention of the physician. And some of its most oovious properties are sensibility, irritability, and excitability. These are the effects of vitality, which have been mistaken for vitality itself.

Some physicians have supposed that the vital principle may lie dormant in a quiescent state, like latent heat, and afterwards be made to shew itself, like heat, by the application of stimuli. But the reasoning is fallacious; it is merely analogical-drawn from a material subject, heat, to prove the phenomena of an immaterial subject-the spirit of life. It would be better reason, to attempt to prove that the spirit is latent, when the body is dead, because we cannot perceive its effects; than to attempt to establish from latent heat, a latent state of mind. For if in fainting, or catalepsy, it can be established that the spirit is merely latent--it may as well be latent in the grave to the day of judgment: for in the argument respecting an immaterial substance, whose very essential quality is activity-and without which it could not be-the latency of one hour, or one hundred thousand milhons, could not at all change the conditions of the question; nor relieve the disputant from the direful consequences of making the soul a material substance.

I know some physicians distinguish between the rational soul and the vital principle of animal life. But the distinction is, perhaps, not clearly understood. There is in animals something far superior to mere vitality. A plant has vitality-its life and death. And Dr. BROWN's theory was applied, with great success, to plants; and supported them with superior energy and vigor, in the high latitudes of Scotland! But in animals, besides vitality, we perceive thought, reason, memory, design, and perseverance, with a great number of the noble passions which animate man--love, gratitude, affection, friendship, grief and bitter woe, even to the destruction of life.