Sir Walter Scott says, of Napoleon: He never obeyed the medical injunctions of his physician, Dr. O'Meara, and obstinately refused to take medicine. "Doctor," said he, "no physicking. We are a machine made to live. We are organized for that purpose. Such is our nature. Do not counteract the living principle. Let it alone; leave it the liberty of defending itself; it will do better than your drugs. The watchmaker cannot open it, and must, on handling it, grope his way blindfold and at random. For once that he assists and relieves it, by dint of tormenting it with crooked instruments, he injures it ten times, and at last destroys it." CHAPTER C. AN ANTI-MEDICAL PREMIUM. The Massachusetts Medical Society, in the year 1856, were authorized by an unknown individual to offer a premium of one hundred dollars for the best dissertation which should be presented to them, on or before April 15, 1857, on the following subject, viz.: "_We would regard every approach towards the rational and successful prevention and management of disease without the necessity of drugs, to be an advance in favor of humanity and scientific medicine._" A number of essays were accordingly presented, having, as is usual in such cases, various degrees of merit; but the preference was given to one written by Worthington Hooker, M. D., of New Haven, Conn. This essay is to be published in due time, and it is devoutly hoped there will be as little delay as possible in the circulation of so remarkable, and, as I have no doubt, valuable, an essay. The facts in connection with this essay, taken as an item in the history of human progress, are truly remarkable. The very title of the essay is at once peculiar and striking; but the main idea which it suggests to the mind is much more so. That a learned society, in the literary metropolis of New England, if not of the United States, should, at the present time, in any way or shape, encourage a discussion of the question, whether, in the practice of medicine, drugs can be dispensed with, was not an event to be expected or so much as dreamed of. It is, therefore, I repeat, very remarkable, and must have a deeper meaning than at first appears. What, then, let us inquire, is that meaning? Does it intimate that there is a belief,--a lurking belief, if you choose to call it so,--among our scientific medical men, that drugs might be entirely dispensed with? Or, does it rather imply a belief in the possibility of approximating to such a point,--with those approximations of two mathematical lines, of which we sometimes hear,--without the possibility of ever reaching it?