mposition have not been so splendid as the exertions of those who have
made religion their tool, they have yet been sufficiently remarkable to
excite the eager attention of mankind, and sufficiently profitable to
reward themselves. Medical science in particular may boast of a numerous
host of these worthies: it would far exceed the limits of this
publication to trace the progress of the charlatan, through the records
of ancient history; for the sake of brevity, a retrospective glance must
not be directed beyond the fifteenth century, when the arch priest of
"modern quackery" made his appearance upon the medical stage. In the
year 1493, Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus de
Hohenheim, was ushered into existence, and at a very early age announced
his discovery, that the recognised principles of medical science were
erroneous, and that in him alone was vested "the art divine, to heal
each lurking ill." Possessing a panacea capable, as he boasted, of
curing all diseases, and even of prolonging life to an indefinite
period, this empiric made war upon the health of mankind, and at last,
after a life of the most infamous debauchery, he died, in the
forty-eighth year of his age, with a bottle of the "Elixir Vitae" in his
pocket. The mantle of Paracelsus has been left behind, and a rich
inheritance of ignorance, insolence, and vanity, bequeathed to a
multitude of heirs; the value of the legacy, however, would have been
trifling, but for the credulity of mankind, which renders these
worthless possessions of inestimable importance: during the last
century, in particular, these descendants have attained an eminence
truly astonishing. Medicine is admitted to be one of the noblest
sciences, as tending, in its practice, to relieve the most irksome
restraints upon existence; it is acknowledged to be a science founded
upon close observation, and so nearly allied to other sciences, that its
pursuit is impracticable without them; that it requires years of
patient toil to fathom its mysteries, and the undivided efforts of a
mind to comprehend its purposes; and yet we are daily told of the most
extraordinary cures, and of the discovery of sovereign remedies, in all
cases and descriptions of disease, by individuals who have never

"Toil'd an hour in physic's cause,
Or giv'n one thought to Nature's laws:"

By men, in short, who are incapable of forming one rational opinion upon
the subject, and unprepared, by previ