“We have multiplied diseases—we have done more, we have increased their mortality.” The celebrated Dr. Bailie, who enjoyed, it appears, a long and lucrative practice, declared at the termination of his career, “that he had no faith in physic;” and on his death-bed frequently exclaimed, “I wish I could be sure that I have not killed more than I have cured.” Abernethy observes sarcastically, “There has been a great increase of medical men of late years, but upon my life, diseases have increased in proportion.” The British and Foreign Quarterly Journal—the leading advocate of drug medication—thus writes:— “This mode of treating disease (Hydropathy) is unquestionably far from inert, and most opposed to the cure of diseases, by the undisturbed processes of nature. It in fact perhaps affords the very best evidence we possess of the curative power of art, and is unquestionably when rationally regulated a most effective mode of treatment in many diseases. Still it puts in a striking light, if not exactly the curative powers of nature, at least the possibility—nay, facility—with which all the ordinary instruments of medical cure, drugs, may be dispensed with. If so many and such various diseases get well entirely without drugs, under one special mode of treatment, is it not more than probable, that a treatment consisting almost exclusively of drugs may be often of non-effect—sometimes of injurious effect?” Dr. Headland, in his prize essay on the action of medicines on the system, thus writes:— “On no question perhaps have scientific men differed more than on the theory of the action of medicines. Either facts, essentially opposed and incompatible, have been adduced by the disagreeing parties, or which is nearly as common, the same fact has received two distinct and opposite interpretations.” Such quotations as the above, which might be multiplied ad infinitum, by any student of medical lore, show that enquiry is abroad amongst the medical profession, and that some at least of its members are dissatisfied with the truth of the system which would consider drug medication as an essential instrument in the cure of disease. The following remarks by Dr. Maclæoud, contained in a letter written by him to Professor Simpson of Edinburgh, show at least, that if the lay public place confidence in allopathic drugging, they place their faith in a system which does not command the confidence of physicians themselves.