agents in disease, as the rule, instead of admitting them
cautiously and reluctantly as the exception, is, as I think, an eddy of
opinion in the direction of the barbarism out of which we believe our
art is escaping. It is only through the enlightened sentiment and
action of the Medical Profession that the community can be brought to
acknowledge that drugs should always be regarded as evils.

It is true that some suppose, and our scientific and thoughtful
associate, Dr. Gould, has half countenanced the opinion, that there may
yet be discovered a specific for every disease. Let us not despair of
the future, but let us be moderate in our expectations. When an oil is
discovered that will make a bad watch keep good time; when a recipe is
given which will turn an acephalous foetus into a promising child; when
a man can enter the second time into his mother's womb and give her back
the infirmities which twenty generations have stirred into her blood,
and infused into his own through hers, we may be prepared to enlarge the
National Pharmacopoeia with a list of specifies for everything but old
age,--and possibly for that also.

NOTE C.--

The term specific is used here in its ordinary sense, without raising
the question of the propriety of its application to these or other
remedies.

The credit of introducing Cinchona rests between the Jesuits, the
Countess of Chinchon, the Cardinal de Lugo, and Sir Robert Talbor,
who employed it as a secret remedy. (Pereira.) Mercury as an internal
specific remedy was brought into use by that impudent and presumptuous
quack, as he was considered, Paracelsus. (Encyc. Brit. art.
"Paracelsus.") Arsenic was introduced into England as a remedy for
intermittents by Dr. Fowler, in consequence of the success of a patent
medicine, the Tasteless Ague Drops, which were supposed, "probably
with reason," to be a preparation of that mineral. (Rees's Cyc. art.
"Arsenic.") Colchicum came into notice in a similar way, from the
success of the Eau Medicinale of M. Husson, a French military officer.
(Pereira.) Iodine was discovered by a saltpetre manufacturer, but
applied by a physician in place of the old remedy, burnt sponge, which
seems to owe its efficacy to it. (Dunglison, New Remedies.) As for
Sulphur, "the common people have long used it as an ointment" for
scabies. (Rees's Cyc. art. "Scabies.") The modern cantiscorbutic regimen
is credited to Captain Cook. "To his sagacity we are indebted for the