some
little alteration frequently becomes necessary to adapt the remedies
to the present state of the disease. It is from this difficulty of
cure that so many remedies have been proposed in scrofula; and yet the
same difficulty continues, plainly shewing that the greater part of
these _nostra_ are mere deceptions, imposing upon the sufferer, both
in mind and pocket. Hence the proposers of these fictitious remedies
become more bold and impudent than ever; nothing is too barefaced for
them to publish; not even that they can extract carious bone without
any other aid than "_the power of their medicines_,"--than which
nothing can be more impudently false. These deceptions, however, find
their proper level, and they then rapidly sink into oblivion. The
botanical medicines and applications which I have had the honour to
bring before the public as remedies for scrofula have stood the test
of _twenty-six years_' experience; during which period many hundreds
of cures have been effected solely by their agency. They still
maintain their unrivalled efficacy; scrofula has yielded its
stubbornness and its malignity to their powers in a vast variety of
instances, and they may be fairly considered as established in the
opinion of the public. Yet, notwithstanding this success, I do not
publish them as specifics; I am not vain enough to challenge the
world, like a mountebank; I am aware that they do, in some
constitutions, sometimes fail of effecting a cure; yet the great
majority of instances in which they have succeeded after every other
means had been tried, fully entitle them to superior consideration;
more especially, as in those cases where they may have failed of
complete success, they have evidently been of essential service in
retarding the progress and alleviating the pain of the disease. I
would also remark that they exert a permanent effect on the
constitution; the patient is not cured to-day and his case published
to-morrow; but most of the cures which I have published have been of
from _two to twenty years_' standing.

I would now particularly direct the attention of patients to the
nature, causes, and symptoms of scrofula, as detailed above, the more
especially as I have patients daily coming to me who do not know what
disease they are really labouring under, and express their
astonishment on being told its real nature. By attending to the
symptoms they might then attack the disease before it becomes fully
developed, whe