o a simple relation of the facts of each case,
and on those facts such case must stand or fall. I have not resorted
to those _artificial props_ which some men are in the habit of
employing because the cases themselves are too lame to stand alone; I
allude to the practice of soliciting the attestations of the patients,
and decoying the simple, the ignorant, well-intentioned, but deceived
neighbours, to add their signatures to cases of which they know
nothing, and of which the details are a series of bombast, falsehood,
ignorance, and humbug. There are many of the cases which I have
related to which I could have obtained the signatures of clergymen,
Members of Parliament, magistrates, and other persons high in rank and
station in life, without saying a word about overseers, churchwardens,
and parishioners, the signatures of whom might be obtained at all
times; but, established as my practice is, I would scorn to importune
those gentlemen, and impertinently to place their names before the
public in a position which every sensible man must declare to be that
of extreme negligence, ignorance, or unbecoming officiousness.

It may be readily supposed, that from the long career of success which
I have had in the treatment of scrofulous diseases, some impudent
individuals should have attempted to imitate my mode of proceeding,
and to foist themselves and their spurious _remedies_ upon the public;
of this I should have cared nothing had they not done it at my
expense; because these inventions will find their proper level in the
estimation of the public, notwithstanding their props and delusions.
But these men are absolutely so ignorant, that they are compelled to
copy my cases and observations _verbatim_; and I have little doubt
that this edition will have issued from the press but a very few
months, before one or other of them will be purloining such parts of
it as their hired scribes may consider to answer their purpose. Not
that these imposters _understand_ the observations which I have made
on scrofula or cancer, their heads are too empty--their ignorance too
profound--and their pretensions consequently too barefaced. Relying
upon the credulity of the public, they make no scruple in being guilty
of glaring plagiarism; they thus strut about in borrowed plumes, and
their presumption keeps pace with their want of information.

As a proof of the grossest ignorance, I have seen it asserted that
sixty cases of _confirmed_ (or cons