These opinions I may support by the observations of others. “Efforts laborieux et multipliés,” says Pinel, “de Sauvages, Cullen, Sagar, Vogel, Linné, Nietzki, Selle, Van-Denheuvell, &c. pour distribuer toutes les maladies connues en classes, en ordres, en genres, en especes, à l’exemple des botanistes, et toujours pour résultat une extrême surcharge du tableau, une classification a bitraire et vaccillante, des affections symptomatiques prises pour des maladies primitives, une multiplication excessive, des unes et des autres par des complications sans nombre des maladies, une sorte d’impossibilité avouée d’obtenir un ensemble régulier qui ne porte que sur quelques points fondamentaux, et qui vienne se placer sans efforts et sans confusion dans la memoire.” I cannot better explain my opinion of the present state of medicine than by using, respecting it, the language of Lord Bacon, which is, at this moment, as applicable to it, as it was when first written. “We see,” says he, “the weakness and credulity of men is such, as they will often prefer a mountebank or witch, before a learned physician, and, therefore, the poets were clear-sighted in discerning this extreme folly when they made Æsculapius and Circe, brother and sister, both children of the sun.—For, in all times, in the opinion of the multitude, witches, and old women, and impostors have had a competition with physicians. And, what followeth? Even this; that physicians say to themselves, as Solomon expresseth it upon an higher occasion, If it befall to me as it befalleth to the fools, why should I labour to be wise? And, therefore, I cannot much blame physicians, that they use commonly to intend some other art or practice which they study more than their own profession. For, you shall have of them, antiquaries, poets, humanists, statesmen, merchants, divines, and in every of these better seen than in their own profession; and, no doubt, upon this ground, that they find that mediocrity and and excellence in their art maketh no difference in profit or reputation toward their fortune; for the weakness of patients and sweetness of life, and nature of hope, maketh men depend upon physicians with all their defects.”