let us inquire, is that meaning? Does it intimate that there
is a belief,--a lurking belief, if you choose to call it so,--among our
scientific medical men, that drugs might be entirely dispensed with?
Or, does it rather imply a belief in the possibility of approximating to
such a point,--with those approximations of two mathematical lines, of
which we sometimes hear,--without the possibility of ever reaching it?

It is by no means improbable, at least in my own view, that the essay
intended by the Boston Society had its origin in a growing tendency,
everywhere, among scientific medical men, to the belief that, in the
most rational and successful practice of medicine, drugs are not
indicated; and that they are only necessary on account of the ignorance
or credulity of the community.

The family practice of many sensible physicians, perhaps I might say of
most, is strongly corroborative of this main idea. I can point to more
than a score of eminent individuals, in this department, who never, or
at most but seldom, give medicine in their own families; above all, they
never take it themselves. It is indeed true, that some of them are
hardly willing to own it, when questioned on the subject; but this does
not alter the plain matter of fact.

Thus Dr. S----, ten miles from Boston, is subject to attacks of a
species of neuralgia, which sometimes last two days; and yet, none of
his family or friends or medical brethren have ever been able to
persuade him to do any thing to mitigate his pain, except to keep quiet
and abstain almost entirely from food; and a daughter of his assures me
that she can scarcely recollect his giving a dose of medicine to any
member of his family. Dr. H., seven miles from Boston, not only does the
same, but frequently disappoints the expectations of his patients, by
giving them no medicine. Yet both these individuals are exceedingly slow
to be seen in company with those men of heterodoxy in medicine, who dare
to advocate, everywhere and on all occasions, what they habitually
practice on themselves and their families.

What, then, I repeat it, can these things mean? Is there not reason for
believing that the truly wise men of the medical profession, at the
present time, are beginning to see, in certain facts which in the
providence of God are forced upon them, that in the general management
of disease, and as the general rule of treatment, no drugs or medicines
are needful?

There is a wide differe