moderate degree of intellectuality), studded with mansions right and left of him, where he may enter to eat sumptuous dinners, and dance at fashionable evening parties.

The very top step of the ladder may be sometimes reached by this fawning, flattering manner, not as a permanent resting-place, but as all the steps have been false, it frequently happens that the topmost is the weakest of all, and he who so climbs will not unfrequently find himself suddenly precipitated to the bottom, when, should he survive his fall, he will have to begin again, and upon more legitimate principles, the crooked, but only surefooted ascent of the ladder of life. But that a class of men possessed of independent fortunes, rendered capable, from the very fact of their position, of giving the tone to society, and setting a noble example to their fellow-men-that these men should put on the manners of the flatterer, the toady, and the sycophant, for the sake of filthy lucre, the obtaining of a title, or the marriage of a member of their family to one of higher grade, is as disgusting to all honest men and baneful to society in general, as it is sinful in the presence of the all-seeing eye of Him who has pronounced a curse upon every species of hypocrisy.

It would appear that some of our countrymen practically carry it out as a principle, that because we are a great people, our manners must necessarily be eccentric. It is very bad logic, to argue the proposition, that in proportion as a people are great, in such ratio shall the manners be eccentric, rude, and peculiar before the nations of the world. A great people ought to have a great, good, and agreeable manner with them.

An individual who has been thoroughly educated and at the same time possessed of polished manners united to good morals, with a high Christian

principle to give the tone and colouring to the inner man, with an intellect strong, vigorous, and original, capable of high achievement, whatever may be the length of his pedigree, bids fair to associate with angels at the end of his toilsome earthly pilgrimage. This man, whether he stands before the king or the pauper, carries with him the genuine stamp of one of the most ornamental and useful pillars of the social edifice. Can any society of fallen man be too good for this Christianized individual?

CHAPTER XVII.

Progress of the World in the last Forty Years-The Stethoscope-Grand Step towards a New System of MedicineDiscrepancies of Medical Opinions-English and French Systems of Treatment-The Brain-Medical Science groping in the Dark-The Pharmacopæia and its FailuresHomœopathy-Mesmerism and its Wonders-SpecificsHydropathy and its Effects-Line of Demarcation between Quackery and Legitimate Practice-Self Treatment of a Weak Constitution-Dr. Bennett on the Union of the Natural Sciences-Pathology and Treatment of Inflammation.

THE progress of the world during the last forty years has been so gigantic, that if the facts had been related of some distant country, whose state and condition had only been attested by one or two occasional travellers, the general statement might have been very fairly impugned, as belonging altogether to the incredulous. What could have been more

romantic than for some good old gentleman of the seventeenth century to have had the history of the last forty years wrapped up in a little volume for his perusal. How strongly it would have savoured of the "Arabian Nights," "Gulliver's Travels," the "Tales of the Genii," and other works of fiction. These things have stolen so insensibly and gradually upon us, that they have lost much of their marvellous nature.

Let us suppose that the old gentleman had been told, that before the middle of the nineteenth century it would become common practice to cut off legs and arms, the patient remaining all the while insensible to the operation; and further, that there would be various ways and means of performing it. Such are the facts of the application of cold, mesmerism, and chloroform.

Medicine, like many other sciences, has undergone many changes for the better within a very short space of time. The stethoscope and percussion, in the hands of the modern practitioner of medicine, have enabled him to perform what the mesmerist lays claim to; viz., that of seeing without eyes. Perhaps the only true clairvoyante of the present day is the stethoscopist. The physician, with this instrument in hand, goes a long way beyond the modern watchmaker. He tells you of the organic changes that have taken place in the mechanism of the lungs, without opening the case that contains them, and without looking into the interior. This stethoscopist is more knowing than the nut-seller; he tells you of the kernel, without cracking the nut. He seems to give his opinion with as much certainty as if he had swam down those little rivers of blood in the interior of the lungs, resided some time in that most wonderful of all pumps, the human heart; speaks of the different regions of the thorax in the same way as

Bruce might mention some portion of the interior of Africa.

This is one grand step for the ushering in of that new system of medicine, which is waiting for some genius to group together under one grand primary law; the many facts that have been discovered by modern physiology and chemistry. The miscroscope has thrown much light upon the sciences of physiology and pathology. It has likewise placed therapeutics upon a sure and more scientific foundation. The speculum has been of immense use in obstetric practice. These are all grand steppingstones to a higher and more perfect system of medicine.

Medicine, notwithstanding the many discoveries that have taken place in the collateral sciences connected with it, still bears upon it the old opprobrium which characterized it in the days of Celsus; viz., that of being a "conjectural art." The young medical student, who has dissected Frenchmen at Paris, Germans at Vienna, and Englishmen in London, has come to the conclusion that anatomy is based upon fixed laws, and is essentially the same in all countries. The same fixed laws are alike applicable to physiology and pathology. Physicians of all countries are of one opinion upon the facts and phenomena which constitute the essential principles of the above-named sciences, however they may differ upon minor and non-essential points. The young physician, who has mastered these sciences, naturally expects to find the same universal concurrence upon the treatment of the various disorders to which the human frame is subject. All rational men agree that Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland, and that it has certain and fixed parallels of latitude and longitude. The same geographical law applies to Dublin and London. Let us suppose that we have a dozen different guide-books,

written all by rational men of average intellect, in which is contained a faithful record of the streets, squares, public edifices, institutions, and population of one of these towns, and that none of these various authors agree in their statements. The reader of these guide-books, after comparing notes full of discrepancies, despairing of ever getting any accurate information upon the subject, in a fit of intense disgust, might exclaim (and who would not excuse him?), "These twelve authors may have been born in twelve different countries, but I am of opinion that they have all started from one locality, and that must be Bedlam."

The medical student has something of this nature to grapple with, especially if he happen to have passed an annus medicus at Heidelberg, another at Paris, and a third in Edinburgh. The German, English, and French systems of medical practice have an almost parallel case to these guide-books. I remember perfectly well, at the time that I was an undergraduate of the University of Paris, having then an opportunity of conversing with young physicians of the Edinburgh school, who, at that time, laughed loud and long at the French system, looking upon it in the light of a system of practical jokes rather than practical medicine. The French, at the same time, had, if possible, a greater contempt for the English school of medicine.

At that time we were carrying on the heroic practice by bleeding, blistering, purging, and attacking the infirmities of humanity with as much hardihood and brute force as our soldiers have evinced in their strong assaults upon the healthy Russian soldiers at Sebastopol. The French, in the meanwhile, were giving their tisânes, quietly leaving the vis medicatrix naturæ to act, without the administration of purgative boluses to be forced down the alimentary canal, like shot out of a cannon,