hich is at first sight
incredible, and because it is incredible, than what is generally thought
reasonable. Credo quia impossibile est,--"I believe, because it is
impossible,"--is an old paradoxical expression which might be literally
applied to this tribe of persons. And they always succeed in finding
something marvellous, to call out the exercise of their robust faith.
The old Cabalistic teachers maintained that there was not a verse,
line, word, or even letter in the Bible which had not a special efficacy
either to defend the person who rightly employed it, or to injure his
enemies; always provided the original Hebrew was made use of. In the
hands of modern Cabalists every substance, no matter how inert, acquires
wonderful medicinal virtues, provided it be used in a proper 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 t