is
as strong in many quarters now as it was at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. Names are only air, and blow away with a change of
wind; but beliefs are rooted in human wants and weakness, and die hard.
The oaks of Dodona are prostrate, and the shrine of Delphi is desolate;
but the Pythoness and the Sibyl may be consulted in Lowell Street for a
very moderate compensation. Nostradamus and Lilly seem impossible in our
time; but we have seen the advertisements of an astrologer in our Boston
papers year after year, which seems to imply that he found believers and
patrons. You smiled when I related Sir Kenelm Digby's prescription with
the live eel in it; but if each of you were to empty his or her pockets,
would there not roll out, from more than one of them, a horse-chestnut,
carried about as a cure for rheumatism? The brazen head of Roger Bacon
is mute; but is not "Planchette" uttering her responses in a hundred
houses of this city? We think of palmistry or chiromancy as belonging to
the days of Albertus Magnus, or, if existing in our time, as given over
to the gypsies; but a very distinguished person has recently shown me
the line of life, and the line of fortune, on the palm of his hand, with
a seeming confidence in the sanguine predictions of his career which
had been drawn from them. What shall we say of the plausible and
well-dressed charlatans of our own time, who trade in false pretences,
like Nicholas Knapp of old, but without any fear of being fined or
whipped; or of the many follies and inanities, imposing on the credulous
part of the community, each of them gaping with eager, open mouth for
a gratuitous advertisement by the mention of its foolish name in any
respectable connection?

I turn from this less pleasing aspect of the common intelligence which
renders such follies possible, to close the honorable record of the
medical profession in this, our ancient Commonwealth.

We have seen it in the first century divided among clergymen,
magistrates, and regular practitioners; yet, on the whole, for the
time, and under the circumstances, respectable, except where it invoked
supernatural agencies to account for natural phenomena.

In the second century it simplified its practice, educated many
intelligent practitioners, and began the work of organizing for
concerted action, and for medical teaching.

In this, our own century, it has built hospitals, perfected and
multiplied its associations and educatio