The risk of a real exposure of the deception being so slight, it is not strange that selfish and cunning physicians should be so fond of this artifice. Some acquire great skill in the use of it, and contrive by this means to make many tongues busy in proclaiming their wonderful cures. The accounts, which empirics give of the cases under their care, are very commonly misrepresentations. For, from their ignorance of medicine, they are not capable of appreciating in any just manner the character and amount of disease, and the influence of remedies. And besides, they have ordinarily very little regard for truth, the object of most of them being to make the credulity of the public subserve their pecuniary interests. They are accordingly very loose in their ideas of disease, and often represent things to be alike which have no real resemblance to each other. The Thompsonians furnish constant illustrations of this remark. If a man who was in pain has obtained relief under their management, and some one else, who had pain in the same part of the body, or somewhere near it, has died under the care of a physician, they are apt to say without any farther evidence, that the pain was from the same cause in the two cases. So also, when scarlet fever is prevalent, they often represent many as having this disease, who have nothing but a common cold, or a slight fever from disordered stomach, and thus get the credit with some people of cutting short a disease, which, under the care of educated skill, cannot be prevented from going through its natural course. It is manifest that the misrepresentations, thus made by many physicians, and by all empirics, must add much to the difficulty of judging of the comparative success of different remedies and modes of practice. And this difficulty is much increased by the accretion of falsehood, which is certain to be made to these misrepresentations, as busy rumor passes them about in the community. Another obstacle to the formation of a just estimate of comparative success in medical practice, is found in the influence of bad treatment upon cases, in which the disease is small in amount and mild in its character. While the judicious physician cures all such cases so readily, that they excite no general interest, the unskillful practitioner and the quack make bad cases of some of them; and yet they are apt to end in recovery, although they appear to be of so grave a character. For a case, which has become bad by improper treatment, is not commonly in as dangerous a condition, as one that has become bad in spite of good treatment. In the latter case you see overpowering disease; while in the former you see little more than the bad influence of inappropriate medicine, which is apt to disappear when the medicine is withheld. The common result of such a case is, that at length the treatment is gradually given up, and the patient, in consequence of its being given up, gets well.