A Hundred Years Ago
THE " SrEcrATon," AUGUST 29, 1829.
FURIOUS DRIVING.
A drunken scoundrel was committed to Newgate yesterday, for driving over and killing a fine boy eleven years of age in Arabella Street, Pimlico. There is hardly a day passes without such accidents, as they are termed ; nor will they cease till some fellow is hanged for causing them.
MEDICINE No MYSTERY.
"It has long," says Dr. Morrison of Dublin, the author of the little book with this title, been a subject of complaint amongst scientific and well-educated medical men, that the public in general seems either unable or unwilling to draw the distinction between the physician of liberal attainments, who founds the practice of his profession on enlightened views of the structure and functions of the animal economy in health and disease, which his previous education and habits of philosophic research have enabled him to take with justice and precision,—and the uneducated and illiberal retailer of drugs and nostrums, who practises physic in the same spirit that he pursues his mechanic trade."
The science of medicine has a still greater enemy than even the roturiera of the profession : it is they who talk nonsense about it— nonsense, it is true, disguised in fine words, but nevertheless nonsense, which dazzles and deludes the ignorant—disgusts and repulses the man of sense and intelligence.
The public is neither " unable nor unwilling to draw the distinction between the physician of liberal attainments , and "the uneducated and illiberal retailer of drugs and nostrums." The public perfectly feels the distinction. The liberal physician requires a guinea for every hasty visit, without which his patient may die as soon as he pleases,—for without the fee how is he to keep up the dignity of the profession, the grand house, the liveried servants, and the well-appointed equipage On the other hand, the illiberal druggist charges nothing for the advice, such as it is ; he demands a small payment for his medicine, which the patient would otherwise have had to procure in addition to the physician's fee —for after all the guinea paid, the educated and enlightened M.D. sends the invalid to the uneducated and illiberal retailer of drugs and nostrums" for the means of cure..
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