state of purity and subdivision.

I have already mentioned the motives attributed by the Perkinists to the
Medical Profession, as preventing its members from receiving the new but
unwelcome truths. This accusation is repeated in different forms and
places, as, for instance, in the following passage: "Will the medical man
who has spent much money and labor in the pursuit of the arcana of
Physic, and on the exercise of which depends his support in life,
proclaim the inefficacy of his art, and recommend a remedy to his patient
which the most unlettered in society can employ as advantageously as
himself? and a remedy, too, which, unlike the drops, the pills, the
powders, etc., of the Materia Medica, is inconsumable, and ever in
readiness to be employed in successive diseases?"

As usual with these people, much indignation was expressed at any
parallel between their particular doctrine and practice and those of
their exploded predecessors. "The motives," says the disinterested Mr.
Perkins, "which must have impelled to this attempt at classing the
METALLIC PRACTICE with the most paltry of empyrical projects, are but too
thinly veiled to escape detection."

To all these arguments was added, as a matter of course, an appeal to the
feelings of the benevolent in behalf of suffering humanity, in the shape
of a notice that the poor would be treated gratis. It is pretty well
understood that this gratuitous treatment of the poor does not
necessarily imply an excess of benevolence, any more than the gratuitous
distribution of a trader's shop-bills is an evidence of remarkable
generosity; in short, that it is one of those things which honest men
often do from the best motives, but which rogues and impostors never fail
to announce as one of their special recommendations. It is astonishing
to see how these things brighten up at the touch of Mr. Perkins's poet:

"Ye worthy, honored, philanthropic few,
The muse shall weave her brightest wreaths for you,
Who in Humanity's bland cause unite,
Nor heed the shaft by interest aimed or spite;
Like the great Pattern of Benevolence,
Hygeia's blessings to the poor dispense;
And though opposed by folly's servile brood,
ENJOY THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD."

Having thus sketched the history of Perkinism in its days of prosperity;
having seen how it sprung into being, and by what means it maintained its
influence, it only remains to tell the brief story of its discomfiture
and