"Unfortunately it is the same in the thought realm as in lifeless nature, _vis inertiae_--the law of indolence, according to which nature remains in its condition to all eternity, until she is forced into some new condition from a new cause. This _vis inertiae_ is harder to conquer in the thought realm than in lifeless nature, for Mesmer appeared a hundred years ago, and yet to-day they call him "a perfect charlatan." Braid, thirty years ago, started hypnotism, but only after Hansen made a multitude of experiments for profit and pleasure in the largest cities of Germany, did the physicians wake up to the idea of investigating it. They teach nothing of mesmerism or hypnotism at the universities. Yes, even one year ago a professor of medicine confessed to me, should I pronounce the word somnambulism I'd be ruined. This is the manner in which ideas are kept from medical students." "If medicine, in its results, could look with pride on its therapeutics, it might be explained. But a therapeutics that allows thousands of children to sink yearly into untimely graves from all manner of diseases, that allows a large proportion of grown persons to be decimated yearly by epidemics, that in its psychiatry is perfectly impotent to stop the rapid increase of insanity, that notoriously cannot cure a migraine, a cold, yea, not even a corn,--such a system ought surely to have some modesty, and be only too glad to accept improvements that tend to ameliorate this condition." CONDITION OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. These remarks of Dr. Du Prel, though somewhat exaggerated, are probably based on truth in their reference to the backward condition of the medical profession in Europe, and of all that portion in America which is essentially European, and governed by European authority. But the healing art in America has been to a great extent emancipated by the spirit of American liberty, and in its actual results among liberal physicians is far in advance of the European system. One signal proof of this was given at Cincinnati in 1849, when that city was visited by a terrible epidemic of Asiatic cholera, which swept off five thousand of its inhabitants. The mortality of cholera under old school practise had been from twenty-five to sixty per cent., the latter having been realized in hospitals at Paris. Under the practice taught in our college at that time, the mortality in 1,500 cases did not exceed six per cent. The atmosphere of freedom in this country, and the absolute medical freedom (until within a few years the colleges have procured medical legislation to help their diplomas, and their graduates) have given a progressiveness and practicality to American physicians which are beginning to be recognized abroad.