that a German groom, who had charge of the prosperous animal, had recourse to this vile stratagem. It is also supposed that men who eat garlic knock up upon a march the soldiers who have not made use of it. Hence, in the old regulations of the French armies, there existed an order to prohibit the use of garlic when troops were on a march. BARBER-SURGEONS, AND THE PROGRESS OF CHIRURGICAL ART. No consideration should render man more thankful to his Creator, and justly proud of the progress of human intellect, than the perfection to which the art of surgery has been carried. In its present improved condition, we are struck with horror at the perusal of the ancient practice, and marvel that its barbarity did not sooner induce its professors to diminish the sum of misery it inflicted on their victims. Ignorance, and its offspring Superstition, seemed to sanctify this darkness. Improvement was considered as impious and unnecessary; and to deny the powers of the chirurgical art, heresy against the holy men, who alone were permitted to exercise it. This supposed divine attribute of the priesthood can be traced to remote ages: Aesculapius was son of Apollo, and princes and heroes did not consider the art of surgery beneath their dignity. Homer has illustrated the skill of Podalirius and Chiron; and Idomeneus bids Nestor to mount his chariot with Machaon, who alone was more precious than a thousand warriors; while we find Podalirius, wrecked and forlorn on the Carian coast, leading to the altar the daughter of the monarch whom he cured, and whose subjects raised a temple to his memory, and paid him divine honours. Tradition informs us, that in the infancy of the art all its branches were exercised indiscriminately by the medical practitioners. It was not then supposed that the human body was subject to distinct affections, external and internal; yet, as its study advanced, the ancients were led into an opposite extreme, and we find that in Egypt each disease became the province of a special attendant, regulated in his treatment by the sacred records handed down by their hierarchy. Herodotus informs us, that "so wisely was medicine managed by the Egyptians, that no physician was allowed to practise any but his own peculiar branch." Accouchments were exclusively the province of females. These practitioners were remunerated by the state; and they were severely punished, when, by any experimental trials, they deviated from the prescribed rules imposed upon them, and, in the event of any patient dying under a treatment differing from the established practice, the medical attendant was considered guilty of a capital offence. These wise provisions were made, says Diodorus, in the full conviction that few persons were capable of introducing any new treatment superior to that which had been sanctioned and approved by old practitioners.