The medical writers have at present something in common with the early authors. Their works bring them in more remuneration through eventual patronage than from habitual sale, but their patronage is that of all the great public, who are waiting to have their ailments cured. As an instance of the way in which literature may improve the position of a medical man, it is stated by Mr. W. Clarke that, through Elliotson’s clinical reports in the _Lancet_, his income was raised, in one year, from £500 to £5000. And yet, on the other hand, when he openly gave in his adherence to the newly-imported doctrine of mesmerism, his large public and private practice almost entirely deserted him; and as the legitimate organs were closed to one so abandoned as even to experiment in “the unknown,” he started a medico-mesmeric journal of his own, the _Zoist_, which was, of course, not published by Mr. Churchill. There is necessarily the same want of general interest in medical as in legal bibliography; and, as in the latter case, works more popularly known were almost invariably published by the usual popular publishers. For instance, Dr. Buchan’s “Domestic Medicine”--probably the most profitable medical book ever written (but not to the author, as he sold the copyright for five pounds), after being re-written by Smellie--was issued in 1770, by the ordinary booksellers. During the author’s lifetime, nineteen editions, each of five thousand, were published, and the volume was translated into all the modern languages. If Mr. Churchill’s catalogue can show no book with a popularity like this, it displays many which, appealing only to a class audience, and necessarily obliged to keep pace with the discoveries of the day, have at once retained their high price and yet reached the honour of numerous editions. It is probably owing chiefly to this fact of an incessant demand by a large section of, at all events, one branch of students, that technical publishing has proved so remunerative, and has escaped, in a great degree, the risk attached to other departments of the trade.