always be regarded as evils,"--any one who chooses may question whether
the evils from their abuse are, on the whole, greater or less than the
undoubted benefits obtained from their proper use. The large exception
of opium, wine, specifics, and anaesthetics, made in the text, takes off
enough from the useful side, as I fully believe, to turn the balance; so
that a vessel containing none of these, but loaded with antimony,
strychnine, acetate of lead, aloes, aconite, lobelia, lapis infernalis,
stercus diaboli, tormentilla, and other approved, and, in skilful hands,
really useful remedies, brings, on the whole, more harm than good to the
port it enters.

It is a very narrow and unjust view of the practice of medicine, to
suppose it to consist altogether in the use of powerful drugs, or of
drugs of any kind. Far from it. "The physician may do very much for the
welfare of the sick, more than others can do, although he does not, even
in the major part of cases, undertake to control and overcome the disease
by art. It was with these views that I never reported any patient cured
at our hospital. Those who recovered their health were reported as well;
not implying that they were made so by the active treatment they had
received there. But it was to be understood that all patients received
in that house were to be cured, that is, taken care of." (Letters to a
Young Physician, by James Jackson, M. D., Boston, 1855.)

"Hygienic rules, properly enforced, fresh air, change of air, travel,
attention to diet, good and appropriate food judiciously regulated,
together with the administration of our tonics, porter, ale, wine, iron,
etc., supply the diseased or impoverished system with what Mr. Gull, of
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, aptly calls the 'raw material of the blood;'
and we believe that if any real improvement has taken place in medical
practice, independently of those truly valuable contributions we have
before described, it is in the substitution of tonics, stimulants, and
general management, for drastic cathartics, for bleeding, depressing
agents, including mercury, tartar emetics, etc., so much in vogue during
the early part even of this century." (F. P. Porcher, in Charleston Med.
Journal and Review for January, 1860.) 1860.)

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

A MEMOIR, Complete

By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Volume I.

NOTE.

The Memoir here given to the public is based on a biographical sketch
prepared by the