No class of men, not even the professors of the wrangling art, are, and ever have been, more universally used and abused, than the members of the medical profession. It has always appeared to me, that this abuse has been occasioned, in some degree, by the pompous air and Papal pretensions of certain members of the faculty; for the irritation of disappointment is, in the ratio of encouragement and hope; and the tongue of experience can have little to say of the infallibility of the medical art. The candid admission of its uncertainty, by Dr. Shattuck, in his dissertation, to which I have referred, is the true mode of erecting a barrier, between honorable and intelligent practitioners, and charlatans. The opinion of Cato and of Pliny, in regard to the art is, of course, to be construed, with an allowance, for its humble condition, in their day. With the exception of the superstitious, and even magical, employment of roots and herbs, it consisted, essentially, in externals. There was nothing like a systematic nosology. The [Greek: iatroi] of Athens, and the _medici_ of Rome were _vulnerarii_, or surgeons. Cato, who died at the age of 85, U. C. 605, is reported, by Pliny, lib. xxix. cap. 7, to have said of the doctors, in a letter to his son Marcus--_Jurarunt inter se, barbaros, necare omnes, medicina_. They have sworn among themselves, barbarians as they are, to kill us all with their physic. In cap. 5 of the same book, he thus expresses his opinion--_mutatur ars quotidie, toties interpolis, et ingeniorum Greciæ flatu impellimur: palamque est, ut quisque inter istos loquendo polleat, imperatorem illico vitæ nostræ necisque fieri: ceu vero non millia gentium sine medicis degant_. The art is varying, from day to day: as often as a change takes place, we are driven along, by some new wind of doctrine from Greece. When it becomes manifest, that one of these doctors gains the ascendency, by his harangues, he becomes, upon the spot, the arbiter of our life and death; as though there were not thousands of the nations, who got along without doctors. In the same passage he says, the art was not practised, among the Romans, until the sixth hundredth year, from the building of the city. The healing art seems to have been carried on, in those days, with fire and sword, that is, with the knife and the cautery. In cap. 6, of the same book, Pliny tells us, that, U. C. 535, _Romam venisse--vulnerarium--mireque gratum adventum ejus initio: mox a sævitia secandi urendique transisse nomen in carnificem, et in tædium artem_--there came to Rome a surgeon, who was, at first, cordially received, but, shortly, on account of his cuttings and burnings, they called him a butcher, and his art a nuisance.