but an act of courteous feeling towards him to suppose that he did not comprehend their purport. Another circumstance deserving reprobation respecting the means which have been taken to get that ill-judged little book into circulation has been the profuse and repeated attempts of a portion of the public press to give it notoriety and circulation. It certainly savours a little of presumption, that those who have not made the science of medicine a study or a profession, should venture to give opinions of the merits or demerits of a work professing to treat of the momentous subjects of health and life. These remarks are not made in any petulant feeling. I believe the author to be a well-intentioned though a misguided man, and as he hints that he published his work with the hope of adding to his income from the profits, I sincerely wish that he had chosen a subject for which he may be more competent, as then I should have been relieved from the necessity of making these remarks, in the expression of which a sense of public duty has alone actuated me. It gives me, however, great satisfaction to draw the public attention to the masterly abstract of Cornaro’s Treatise appended to the book, and which, from its disparity of style, is evidently written by another person. It is no extravagant praise to say that the public is under infinite obligations to the able and experienced writer who made that valuable addition to the book. Comaro’s works may now be read with advantage by every one, as it is freed from the disagreeable prosings, tautologies, and incongruities which pervade that work. It is to be hoped that the proprietor of the book will favour the community with its publication in a separate form. Considering the severity of the remarks I have made in the preceding pages on the medical profession, it may be supposed I have set myself up in opposition to medical men of all descriptions. I have no such intention. The intelligent and skilful physician and surgeon I reverence, and only wish that the following observations were not a true portrait of their often unsuccessful progress.