Nor has Fashion confined her baneful interference to the selection of remedies; she has ventured even to decide upon the nature of Diseases, and to change and modify their appellations according to the whim and caprice by which she is governed. The Princess, afterwards Queen Anne, was subject to Hypochondriacal attacks, which her Physicians pronounced to be _Spleen_, _Vapours_, or _Hyp_, and recommended Rawleigh’s Confection, and Pearl Cordial, for its cure: this circumstance was sufficient to render both the Disease and Remedy _fashionable_; no other complaint was ever heard of in the precincts of the court but that of the _Vapours_, nor any medicine esteemed but that of Rawleigh. Some years afterwards, in consequence of Dr. Whytt’s publication on “_Nervous diseases_,” a lady of Fashion was pronounced to be _Nervous_—the term became general, and the disease _fashionable_; and _Spleen_, _Vapours_, and _Hyp_ were consigned to oblivion: the reign of Nervous Diseases, however, did not long continue, for a popular work appeared on Biliary Concretions, and all the world became _bilious_. We have not patience to pursue the history of these follies; a transient glance at the ephemeral productions of the last twenty years would furnish a sad display of the versatility of medical opinions, and of the instability of the practice which has been founded upon them: and they will no doubt furnish the future historian with strong and forcible illustrations. THE ASSIGNING TO ART THAT WHICH WAS THE EFFECT OF UNASSISTED NATURE, OR THE CONSEQUENCE OF INCIDENTAL CHANGES OF HABIT, DIET, &c.