nineteen are fools who come to me, whilst the one wise man applies
to you--which has the better practice? Believe me, doctor, that although
the wise seek the wise in your person, the fools will find me out." How
exactly is this assertion fulfilled in the present day! The wise man,
who values his health as his greatest earthly blessing, scorns to resign
it to the care of one who knows not the value of the trust; who cannot
comprehend the principles upon which it depends, the cause which
deranges it; or discover the particular organ requiring assistance:
common sense interposes a bar to any communication between a wise man
and a charlatan; while the multitude will flock to the snare, or swallow
the bait; first the gulls, and then the victims; the nostrums, injurious
or poisonous as they may be, find ready mouths for their reception; the
dogmas, willing ears; and the system of Mr. Halsted, ready sufferers. Is
it not to be lamented, that a man who claims a caste above this
multitude, will sometimes forget himself so far as to follow their
route, heedless of the lines of Horace?--

"When in a wood we leave the certain way
One error fools us, though we various stray."

He madly leaves the track of reason to tread in the steps of folly; but
_he_ may perhaps retrace them, and if an injured, yet a wiser man. Not
so the generality,--they pursue an _ignis fatuus,_ which, dazzling their
perceptions as it lures them on, at last leaves them in the mire (from
which no skill perhaps can extricate them) to curse themselves and their
deceiver.

The exertion of medical science is sufficient for the removal of
diseases capable of cure, and is unaccompanied by the risk of leaving
others in their place: quackery, on the contrary, attempts what it
cannot, from ignorance, perform, and frequently establishes a malady of
more serious character than the one it professed to relieve. The medical
man, aware of the structure of the human form, of the disposition and
arrangement of its several parts in a state of health, is gradually led
to a consideration of their condition in disease: that grand master,
experience, enables him to discriminate between the cause and effect of
morbid action; a long attention to the detail of practice gives him
power over a list of remedies whose properties he has ascertained by
observation; and in addition to all this, his daily thoughts are engaged
in the investigation of sickness in its many forms, and, fre