As we have already stated, duels have been rare in the medical profession. Like the ladies, physicians have, in their periods of anger, been content with speaking ill of each other. That they have not lost their power of courteous criticism and judicious abuse, any one may learn, who, for a few hours, breathes the atmosphere of their cliques. It is good to hear an allopathic physician perform his duty to society by frankly stating his opinion of the character and conduct of an eminent homœopathic practitioner. Perhaps it is better still to listen to an apostle of homœopathy, when he takes up his parable and curses the hosts of allopathy. "Sir, I tell you in confidence," observed a distinguished man of science, tapping his auditor on the shoulder, and mysteriously whispering in his ear, "I know _things_ about _that man_ that would make him end his days in penal servitude." The next day the auditor was closeted in the consulting-room of _that man_, when that man said--quite in confidence, pointing as he spoke to a strong box, and jingling a bunch of keys in his pocket--"I have _papers_ in that box, which, properly used, would tie a certain friend of ours up by the neck." Lettsom, loose-living man though he was for a member of the Society of Friends, had enough of the Quaker element in him to be very fond of controversy. He dearly loved to expose quackery, and in some cases did good service in that way. In the _Medical Journal_ he attacked, A. D. 1806, no less a man than Brodum, the proprietor of the Nervous Cordial, avowing that that precious compound had killed thousands; and also stating that Brodum had added to the crime of wholesale murder the atrocities of having been born a Jew, of having been a shoe-black in Copenhagen, and of having at some period of his chequered career carried on an ignoble trade in oranges. Of course Brodum saw his advantage. He immediately brought an action against Phillips, the proprietor of the _Medical Journal_, laying his damages at £5000. The lawyers anticipated a harvest from the case, and were proceeding not only against Phillips, but various newsvendors also, when a newspaper editor stept in between Phillips and Brodum, and contrived to settle the dispute. Brodum's terms were not modest ones. He consented to withdraw his actions, if the name of the author was given up, and if the author would whitewash him in the next number of the Journal, under the same signature. Lettsom consented, paid the two attorneys' bills, amounting to £390, and wrote the required puff of Brodum and his Nervous Cordial.