Efforts, it is true, have been made by the medical profession to correct the tendency to empiricism, which is so rife in the community. But I believe that it can be satisfactorily shown that these efforts have, to a great extent, been made with wrong means, and in a wrong direction; and that for this reason they have failed to strike at the root of the evil. Much reliance has been placed upon giving to the people a knowledge of anatomy, physiology, dietetics, &c. For this purpose books have been published, journals of health have been issued, and lectures have been delivered. All this is very well. Valuable information has thus been communicated. Still, it leaves the great sources of empiricism nearly, if not quite, untouched. These are pouring forth their destructive streams more abundantly than ever, notwithstanding the great increase of late of popular knowledge on medical subjects. And this is as we should expect it would be from the nature of the case. For the knowledge, which one obtains from popular books and lectures, of the human system as a piece of mechanism, can have but little influence upon his notions in regard to the operation of remedies, on that system; for the operation of remedies, for the most part, lies beyond the mere mechanical principles of the organization, and therefore cannot be materially elucidated by a knowledge of those principles. For example, the knowledge, which the dyspeptic gains, from popular instruction, of the situation and the shape of the stomach, of the number of its coats, and of the process of digestion, cannot enlighten him in regard to the treatment of his disease, and will therefore not guard him against delusion on this subject. He will be just as ready, as he was before he acquired this knowledge, to take some patent medicine, or to resort to some boasting empiric. None of the common popular errors can be removed by the knowledge referred to. If a man should adopt the notion, that the blood is the seat of all disease, and therefore that remedies relieve disease by purifying the blood, would it be possible to dislodge that error, simply by showing him the heart, and describing to him minutely the circulation? The mechanical contrivances of this beautiful and wonderful piece of machinery have manifestly no reference to the state of the blood contained in it. How can he know, from an examination of the heart and the arteries and the veins, whether he is right in attributing all disease to a corrupt state of the life-giving fluid? Or what light will this examination give him in relation to the remedies which he supposes enter the circulation and rectify the blood, by neutralizing whatever it contains which is bad?