I think that physicians often err in their readiness to appeal to results, to show the public the superiority of their practice to that of the quack. There is no objection to such an appeal, when a sufficient number of well-observed and authenticated facts can be produced, bearing upon the point in question. But this cannot ordinarily be done, when the community are to pass judgment in the case. The quack likes to join issue with the physician here, for he knows how easily the public are deceived in relation to facts, and he makes his appeal before them to results with a bold confidence. The proprietor of a patent medicine points you to his wonderful cures, as the facts which must convince every one of its efficacy and value. The Thompsonian, with his red pepper and lobelia and steam, claims that he is right and every body else wrong, and appeals to his successful results as the proof. The Homœopathist comes with his little globules, and says that, laugh as you may at the tiny doses, his appeal is to the cures, which he claims they effect as if by magic. Talk with some physician who has adopted this mode of practice from purely mercenary views, and who is rather ashamed of it, (for there are such physicians)—ply him with argument, to show the fallacy of his doctrines—drive him from one strong hold to another; and at last you will come to his citadel, in which he feels perfectly secure from all your shafts. He will tell you, with a cool kind of defiance that you have not seen in him before, ‘there are the facts—our medicines cure disease, and the people are beginning to see the truth.’ The Hydropathist too will point you to narratives of scores of patients, cured of all sorts of maladies by nothing but a cold wet blanket, and will say, ‘wonderful as it may seem, there are the results.’ So it ever has been. The same appeal has been made in behalf of all the delusions that have ever obtained a currency in any community. The Indian who performs his strange and uncouth manœuvres, and utters his howling incantations over his patient, and the Chilian doctor who blows vehemently about the bed of the sick, both, like the Thompsonian, and the Homœopath, and the Hydropath, appeal to their facts, their cures, as the sure proof of the efficacy of their practice. The royal touch, the weapon ointment, the tar water of Bishop Berkeley,[27] and the metallic tractors of Dr. Perkins, were each in their time in the same way proved, to the satisfaction of the great public, to be wonderfully successful in the cure of disease. An array of facts appeared in favor of the last mentioned of these delusions, Perkinism, that surpassed altogether the results which are now attributed to Homœopathy. But time has shown that the results were falsely attributed—a fact which should teach the public a lesson, in regard to the apparent results which are appealed to in support of the delusions of the present day.