"
There is much truth and pertinence in some of the above remarks, and
they apply nearly to the general practice of the present day. The farces
and whims of people require often as much discrimination on the part of
the physician as the disease itself. Those who know best how to flatter
such caprices, are frequently the best paid for their trouble. Nervous
diseases are always in season, and it is here that some professional
dexterity is pardonable. Nature, when uninterrupted, will often do more
than art; but our inability upon all occasions to appreciate the efforts
of nature in the cure of diseases, must always render our notion, with
respect to the powers faith, liable to numerous errors and deceptions.
There is, in fact, nothing more natural, and at the same time more
erroneous, than to lay the cure of a disease to the door of the last
medicine that had been prescribed. By these means the advocates of
amulets and charms, have ever been enabled to appeal to the testimony of
what they are pleased to call experience in justification of their
pretensions, and egregious superstitions; and cases which, in truth,
ought to have been classed, or rather designated, as lucky escapes, have
been triumphantly pulled off as skilful cures; and thus, medicines and
medical practitioners, have alike received the meed of unmerited praise,
or the stigma of unjust censure.
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