The class of practitioners I have
referred to have always been the most faithful in attending to these
points. No doubt they have sometimes prescribed unwisely, in compliance
with the prejudices of their time, but they have grown wiser as they have
grown older, and learned to trust more in nature and less in their plans
of interference. I believe common opinion confirms Sir James Clark's
observation to this effect.
The experience of the profession must, I think, run parallel with that of
the wisest of its individual members. Each time a plan of treatment or a
particular remedy comes up for trial, it is submitted to a sharper
scrutiny. When Cullen wrote his Materia Medica, he had seriously to
assail the practice of giving burnt toad, which was still countenanced by
at least one medical authority of note. I have read recently in some
medical journal, that an American practitioner, whose name is known to
the country, is prescribing the hoof of a horse for epilepsy. It was
doubtless suggested by that old fancy of wearing a portion of elk's hoof
hung round the neck or in a ring, for this disease. But it is hard to
persuade reasonable people to swallow the abominations of a former
period. The evidence which satisfied Fernelius will not serve one of our
hospital physicians.
In this way those articles of the Materia Medica which had nothing but
loathsomeness to recommend them have been gradually dropped, and are not
like to obtain any general favor again with civilized communities.
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