ll far from thinking them perfect.

It would have been an easy task to have given select cases, whose
successful treatment would have spoken strongly in favour of the
medicine, and perhaps been flattering to my own reputation. But Truth
and Science would condemn the procedure. I have therefore mentioned
every case in which I have prescribed the Foxglove, proper or
improper, successful or otherwise. Such a conduct will lay me open to
the censure of those who are disposed to censure, but it will meet the
approbation of others, who are the best qualified to be judges.

To the Surgeons and Apothecaries, with whom I am connected in
practice, both in this town and at a distance, I beg leave to make
this public acknowledgment, for the assistance they so readily
afforded me, in perfecting some of the cases, and in communicating the
events of others.

The ages of the patients are not always exact, nor would the labour of
making them so have been repaid by any useful consequences. In a few
instances accuracy in that respect was necessary, and there it has
been attempted; but in general, an approximation towards the truth,
was supposed to be sufficient.

The cases related from my own experience, are generally written in the
shortest form I could contrive, in order to save time and labour. Some
of them are given more in detail, when particular circumstances made
such detail necessary; but the cases communicated by other
practitioners, are given in their own words.

I must caution the reader, who is not a practitioner in physic, that
no general deductions, decisive upon the failure or success of the
medicine, can be drawn from the cases I now present to him. These
cases must be considered as the most hopeless and deplorable that
exist; for physicians are seldom consulted in chronic diseases, till
the usual remedies have failed: and, indeed, for some years, whilst I
was less expert in the management of the Digitalis, I seldom
prescribed it, but when the failure of every other method compelled me
to do it; so that upon the whole, the instances I am going to adduce,
may truly be considered as cases lost to the common run of practice,
and only snatched from destruction, by the efficacy of the Digitalis;
and this in so remarkable a manner, that, if the properties of that
plant had not been discovered, by far the greatest part of these
patients must have died.

There are men who will hardly admit of any thing which an author
advan