My own notion is, that the inductive method should be applied to our internal economy; and why should not a scientific body bring scientific principles of government into daily action? The profession living in each of the large towns, and in the surrounding districts, should be incorporated, and have all the privileges and responsibilities of our civic corporate bodies. The influence of numerous medical corporations dotted over the country, if their action were confined to their own locality only, would be considerable; but if they acted conjointly through a general council, what potent results might we not expect! You need only refer to the occupation abstract of the population returns to see that there would be no deficiency as regards numbers. Five years ago, the physicians and surgeons in five provincial towns stood thus:-Birmingham 166, Bristol 192, Leeds 130, Liverpool 334, Manchester (including Salford) 274. Now you cannot give me any solid reason why these large bodies of medical practitioners should not be incorporated. You cannot say that the discipline, dignity, or progress of the profession, would be retarded by such incorporation. You cannot say that they have not a right to the aid of the law in establishing a system of self-government, having in view the maintenance of professional honour, the advancement of medical science, and the public weal. Whatever argument you bring against my proposition applies equally to the medical corporations of the metropolis. Pray note the advantages which would accrue from this scheme. Firstly, you would secure unity of action by a general council, constituted by representatives from the several corporations. You could secure a joint purse and division of labour in the sciential evolution of the profession. Every medical corporation would have its library, its reading-room, its museum for pathology and the kindred sciences, its curator, its physiological investigator, as well skilled in microscopic as in biochemical analysis. And who knows but that rich and enlightened laymen, seeing our efforts, would join us? Indeed, they certainly would, and the several local corporations would be enriched by legacies for sciential purposes. Public-spirited men would think more of the prevention of disease, by increase of knowledge, than of the cure of disease by increase of hospitals. With such a system should indulge a hope that before long every practitioner would keep a case-book on a uniform plan, and each corporation would have its statist to work out the results by the numerical method. I might as well stop here, but permit me to add that I augur good from the movement you have commenced. I trust confidently that it will usher in a true reformation of the profession. I hope we shall all soon be convinced that our political advancement, as an industrial body, depends upon our sciential advancement as a profession; upon the good we can effect; upon the knowledge we can gain; upon, in short, our moral and intellectual condition. I hope, too, that the miserable rivalry of grades will cease, or at least so much of it as will allow of unity of action upon these principles. This united action of the profession is indeed a worthy object of ambition; the more difficult of attainment, the more glorious when accomplished. It would surely be a noble sight to see our army of twenty thousand practitioners (now a disorganized multitude) marching forward in disciplined battalions, obedient to a gradation of officers, turning aside from no obstacles, winning triumph after triumph, as well over ignorance and error as over social prejudice and ingratitude, and setting an abiding example to mankind of the power of science to gain permanent worldly power and effect real objects. Is there any reason why we should not try? Of course the word impossible must be excluded from our vocabulary. Believe me, my dear Sir, yours most faithfully, T. LAYCOCK. IV. ON THE PATRONAGE OF QUACKS AND IMPOSTORS BY THE UPPER CLASSES OF SOCIETY. BY THE EDITOR. THE following communication appeared in the Athenæum' of Feb. 28, 1846. It is here reprinted in the hope that, through the medium of the members of the profession, it may not only reach an additional number of that class of persons to whom it was, in the first instance, specially addressed, but may reach them with the further advantage of new illustrations and analogous commentaries, which it must be in the power of every medical man to supply. The few following prefatory remarks seem to afford not only a further reason for republishing it, but also for giving it a place among the communications to which this department of the Journal is at present devoted. The evil which the subjoined narrative is intended to expose seems so far from decreasing with the progress of knowledge, that it would appear almost to keep pace with it. And it is worth the serious consideration of the members of the profession, whether this belief in the most palpable of absurdities may not, in some degree at least, be fostered by part of their own conduct. When we consider, for instance, the knowledge which the public have of the kind of evidence of the powers of remedies which medical men are often satisfied with the mystery which is still, not unfrequently, sometimes purposely, thrown around the real or supposed mode of action of medicines-the belief engendered by much of the ordinary practice, that nature is helpless in the cure of diseases, and the active interference of art necessary in all cases—and, lastly, the overweening confidence so constantly displayed in the potency of many medicaments of obscure action or of no action at all-there would certainly appear to be some reason for having a like fear with Macbeth, "that we but teach instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor." If men ignorant of every principle of science, especially medical science, are led, on what they must consider good authority, to regard the relation of sequence of events as the accurate exponent and characteristic of medicinal cure, there exists no good reason for surprise if they fall into the trap laid for them by the impostor, when they can urge in excuse that the grounds on which they proceed are as sound and secure in the one case as the other. We know that this is not so; because we know that our own knowledge, whatever be its amount, is real, and our good faith unquestionable, while the utter ignorance and roguery of the professed charlatans are as real and unquestionable; but the public can only be made to know this by having their minds enlightened as to the true principles on which therapeutics is based, and as to the actual amount of our positive knowledge and positive power, and being thus made to see and comprehend the true and unmistakeable distinctions between rational practice and empiricism, and between the honorable professors of legitimate medicine and the vile race of quacks with which the world in general, and this country in particular, is infested. MADEMOISELLE JULIE. Omne animi vitium tanto conspectius in se Crimen habet quanto major qui peccat habetur. (Juv. Sat. viii.) Every now and then we read in the public prints of some wretched old woman brought before the police magistrate for practising, or pretending to practise, witchcraft, and therethrough swindling juvenile widows and love-sick maid-servants out of their shillings and sixpences.* Occasionally, also, we find parties of the same class and craft invading the province of the doctor, and doing "a snug little business" in the way of prescribing for, and of course curing, the diseases of all and sundry who may become their clients. The medium through which these wise women of the alleys and suburbs of this great city profess to become mistresses of the maladies of the unseen, is commonly a bit of rag from the clothing, a nail-paring, a lock of hair, or anything else connected with the person of the patient. The half-crown being paid, the nature of the malady is declared, and the means of cure specified. This is very various, according to the experience, the genius, or the fancy of the prescriber. Sometimes the disease is combated by what the learned would call dynamic means, such as words or gestures, or the doing certain things at certain hours, or the handling of black or white cats, the plucking feathers from the tails of cocks, &c. At other times, the vulgar materials wherewith doctors work are put in requisition; especially those more obsolete sorts of drugs which, owing to the prime virtues of powerlessness and harmlessness, have come down to our times with undiminished fame from the days of the Asclepiades or before. Cures marvellous and manifold are thus wrought; cures, the result of which is never questioned; and which, to the philosophers of the alleys and attics, seem, and are, unquestionable. And no marvel. Have not these reasoners the very same grounds for their belief which satisfy their betters? The disease was declared, the remedy prescribed and administered, and the patient after a time got well. What can be more convincing? If, being ignorant of physic, they are ignorant of the fact that nature has the happy power of curing some diseases of her own mere motion; and if, having studied neither Bacon nor Locke, they confound sequence with consequence, the post hoc with the propter hoc,-can we blame severely, or at all, their loose logic or their halting reasoning? Should we not rather pity, and excuse, and forgive them, laying blame, if blame there be, on the lowliness of their lot and all its attendant circumscriptions, which make ignorance unavoidable, science impossible? Alas, Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll. Nor, looking to the influences of the same condition, the same circumstances, the same opportunities, the same causes, should we regard with too deep a disgust, or visit with too fierce an indignation, the poor wretches who thus practise on the ignorance and credulity of their humble neighbours. In one sense, knowledge may be said to be goodness as well as power; if it strengthens the intellectual faculties into wisdom, it strengthens the moral faculties into virtue. It has this tendency at least; and if it does not always do so, it often does so. Ought we, then, to feel surprise that among the children of penury and ignorance there are deceivers as well as dupes ? *The fact of the present paper having been written for a non-medical Journal will account for some peculiarities of manner and style, which will not fail to strike the professional reader. + Sunt verba et voces, quibus hunc lenire dolorem But what shall we say for those who, without having any of the same grounds for excuse, exhibit the same intellectual debility, the same debasing credulity, the same lamentable ignorance and error? Could it be credited, if it were not known as a positive and melancholy truth, that it is by the upper classes of society, by our aristocracy, that quacks, charlatans, pretenders, and impostors of all sorts, are most especially patronized? Proofs of this fact, and the most pertinent illustrations, present themselves on every side. Indeed the thing is undeniable-is notorious. What is its explanation? Can it be aught else than this-that among a portion of this class of the community, with all their refined and fashionable culture and accomplishments, science and logic, scientific truths, and the modes of investigating them and judging of their nature, their evidence and value-are as little known as among their social antipodes? If such is the fact, it is one as melancholy to contemplate as it is deeply to be deplored: it is more-it is discreditable, unjustifiable, fraught with much present evil, and ominous of more. I give the following brief narrative, as explaining and illustrating, and (I hope) justifying the observations and animadversions which precede. I leave to the reader all comment on the case. To me it seems to speak for itself, "with most miraculous organ," disclosing secrets of the most humiliating and portentous kind, in quarters where, least of all, such disclosures should be possible. During the last six months there has been allocated in the near neighbourhood of the most fashionable precinct of the West-end, a certain young Frenchwoman, known by the name of Mademoiselle Julie, who has obtained a great reputation among our aristocracy as a curer of diseases. She is about twenty years of age, obviously from her manners and conversation of the lower orders of society, ill-educated, and indeed illiterate. She is accompanied by her mother, a person in manners and bearing even inferior to her daughter, and by a gentleman who is said to be the brother-in-law of the mother. These people at present occupy good furnished lodgings in a street opening into one of the West-end squares. Their principal operations are performed at home; but Mademoiselle also condescends to visit patients at their own houses, more especially those of high rank and title. The system adopted by Mademoiselle Julie is too ingenious and too well calculated to attract attention from the class by whom she is patronized, to allow us to doubt that it has been adopted after mature consideration and with malice aforethought. It is well known that the two most striking and attractive delusions of recent times, HOMEOPATHY and MESMERISM, have met with especial favour and patronage from the upper classes of society in this country, and have, through their means chiefly, become in consequence fashionable and famous. The system of the fair Julie has the singular merit not only of combining these two celebrities, but of selecting their most attractive and agreeable parts, and separating them from all that is offensive and troublesome. Thus armed, thus accomplished, is it surprising that her success has been great, or that, from the first day of her descent upon the realms of fashion, she has gone on conquering and to conquer? This is the system of our Wise-Woman of the West-end: The sick person cuts off a lock of her (or his) own hair "close to the head," places it, unprofaned by other touch, upon a piece of white silk, folds this with his (or her) own hand, and finally deposits it in an envelope of clean paper. This facile and self-executed rape of the lock is all that is required of the patient in the first instance. No doctor intrudes with his troublesome and disagreeable questions-no pulse need be felt-no tongue need be shown-no horrid percussor or more horrid stethoscope need frighten the gentle breast from its pro priety. The lock is shorn, the deed is done; the dropped Morning Post is picked up, the new novel is resumed; the ripple of a moment vanishes, and the surface of life is tranquil as before. The next step is to convey the precious lock to the cell of the Wise-Woman, where the real business begins. This is transacted as follows: The uncle or mother of Julie magnetizes or mesmerizes her by some of the ordinary manipulations, and she falls asleep almost instantly (time is precious to those who are paid by the half-hour). The hair is then placed in her hand by the person who brings it; this person is put en rapport with her, by simply touching her hand once; she removes the covering from the mystical lock, takes it into her hand, and then commences a very active and elaborate process of rubbing, and squeezing, and picking it with the right hand, while it is held by the left; occasionally, also, she smells it. When this process has continued a few minutes, she begins to touch and press her own body with the fingers of the right hand, moving them from one place to another, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, but finally dwelling preferably on one place, which she continues to press and manipulate more mystically and earnestly, and at last exclusively. It is then easily guessed that here is the site of the patient's principal malady, and the guess is soon verified by the words of the Pythoness. These words are waited for by the uncle, pen in hand, and are immediately committed to paper as they are uttered slowly, interruptedly, and in a subdued, sleepy tone. The record is made in the first person singular, as if the fair Julie were the patient. "I feel a pain,"-" I feel a sensation," &c., a mode of expression which is accounted for by the transcendent fact, of which both Julie and her confrère assure us, that through the mystic influence of the lock of hair by the intermingling of its (i. e. the patient's) magnetic fluid with her own, she, poor soul! is for the nonce made the recipient of all the aches, pains, sensations,-in short, of all the morbid symptoms of the unseen sufferer, who may, for anything she knows or cares, be hundreds of miles distant. Good heaven, what a life of martyrdom must be that of poor Julie! To have one's poor carcase made the stage on which all the horrors that escaped from Pandora's box are to play their part-one after another, from morning to night; and, worse than all, a new one every hour! The very imagination of the thing is intolerable; what must be the reality? The conception of such an intrinsic monopoly by one poor body of all the ills that flesh is heir to, puts that of Dante to shame. The worst torments of the Inferno must yield to the Promethean sufferings of the unhappy Julie. And then, what inconceivable devotion to the cause of humanity, what unexampled fortitude, what heroic courage to dare and do all this, voluntarily, willingly, readily, cheerfully, yea eagerly! It is, of course, impossible to believe that into a mind capable of doing and suffering such things, the thought of fee or reward as compensation could enter; and, doubtless, the half-sovereign per séance and per lock, is accepted either in simple accordance with the practice of vulgar doctors, or for the purpose of being expended in relieving the sufferings of others, which assuredly none can know so truly and feel so surely as our poor Pythoness. But to return. Having exposed the ills of one region, she passes to another, then to a third (as the case may be), and so on until she has given the full, true, and particular account of all the patient's diseased organs and their various symptoms. This is what the doctors call the diagnosis of the disease (viz. the settling its nature and name), which is followed by its prognosis, or exposition of its result; and, last of all, comes the treatment. This is set about as follows: A small box or tray containing upwards of two hundred tiny bottles is set before her. These bottles are those used by the Homœopathists, each containing its multitude of globules of medicated sugar of milk, with the name of |