In Mill's British India, vol. ii. p. 185, Lond. 1826, the reader may find a statement of the paltry amount of knowledge, on the subject, not only of medicine, but of surgery, among the Hindoos: "Even medicine and surgery, to the cultivation of which so obvious and powerful an interest invites, had scarcely attracted the rude understanding of the Hindus." Sir William Jones, in the Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 354, says, "there is no evidence, that, in any language of Asia, there exists one original treatise on medicine, considered as a science." Crawford, in his Sketches, and he has an exalted opinion of the Hindoos, states, that surgery is unknown among them; and, that, in cases of wounds from the sabre or musket, they do no more than wash the wound; bind it up with fresh leaves, and keep the patient on rice gruel. Buchanan, in his journey, through Mysore, vol. i. p. 336, informs us, that medicine was in the hands of ignorant and impudent charlatans. Origen, who was born, about 185 A. D., states that the Egyptians believed thirty-six devils divided the human body, among them; and that diseases were cured, by supplication and sacrifice, to the particular devil, within whose precinct the malady lay. This is a convenient kind of practice. May it not have some relation to the fact, referred to by Herodotus, in his History, book ii. sec. 84, that the doctors, in Egypt, were not practitioners, in a general sense, but for one part of the body only. Possibly, though I affirm nothing of the sort, Origen may have written _devils_ for _doctors_, by mistake: for the doctors, in those days, were, manifestly, very little better. If it be true--_et quis negat?_--that Hippocrates was the father of physic--the child was neither born nor begotten, before its father, of course, and Hippocrates was born, about 400 B. C., which, according to Calmet, was about 600 years after David practised upon Saul, with his Jews'-harp. His genealogy was quite respectable. He descended from Æsculapius, through a long line of doctors; and, by the mother's side, he was the eighteenth from Hercules, who was, of course, the great grandfather of physic, at eighteen removes; and who, it will be remembered, was an eminent practitioner, and doctored the Hydra. Divesting the subject of all, that is magical and fantastical, Hippocrates thought and taught such rational things, as no physician had thought and taught before. It appears amazing to us, the uninitiated, that the healing art should have been successfully practised at all, from the beginning of the world, till 1628, in utter ignorance of the circulation of the blood; yet it was in that year the discovery was made, when Dr. William Harvey dedicated to Charles I. and published his _Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis_. No. CIX. Quackery may be found, in every vocation, from the humblest, to the holiest.