In many complaints, indeed, in the principal part to which the human frame is subject, the inutility of dissection is well known to every well informed man. But the assumption of the title of “Surgeon,” and the false importance (not to mention the legal security which it affords against prosecution, and the facility of exemption from examination of competency,) it gives the claimant in the estimation of the ignorant part of mankind, have contributed largely to the propagation of the erroneous notions which are so anxiously disseminated on the subject. Though it would be fruitless to attempt to expose this popular folly of the day, (which like all other follies or fashions will “have its rage” until its own enormity cures itself,) yet “it is some consolation to reflect that in another age a more successful practice of medicine will diminish the false estimation in which surgical foppery is now held; when to save a limb will be deemed a superior exertion of skill to its amputation.” Nor is the other branch (namely, that which was once designated by the now exploded and unfashionable title of _apothecary_) free from reprehension. Those “sons of the pestle and mortar,” whose money-interest induces them rather to encourage disease than to subdue it, as the longer they keep the patient in hand, the greater number of phials, pill-boxes, gallipots, draughts and powders they will be entitled to charge for, are so wedded to routine, that they can seldom bring themselves to lay aside the lumber and unmeaning farrago of materia medicas, pharmacopœias, &c. Their prejudices and pertinacity in favour of received opinions and established usage are so blind and inveterate, that they will never allow themselves to have recourse to the simple remedies which Nature points out: all must be mystery, complication, and conformity to etiquette with them: to _lead_ nature by simple means would be unprofessional; to practise “secundum artem,” she must be driven by powerful remedies, as blue pill, or some active chemical preparation; and they must bring into play in the simplest ailment to which the human frame is subject that huge mass of disjointed practices and experiments, which is held together by no order, and is not capable of any satisfactory application, or even elucidation. On this subject, the remarks of the editor of the Monthly Gazette of Health are so deserving of observation, that I cannot deny myself the advantage of enriching my pages with them. That learned gentleman (who has contributed more to the exposure of quackery and imposture than any writer of the age) having introduced to the notice of his readers Dr. Mackie’s communication of the medicinal virtues of the Guaco plant in cases of hydrophobia among the Indians of South America, closes his information with the following striking remarks: