But it will perhaps be said, that this has often been attempted, and with so slight success, that there is very little encouragement for repeating such attempts; and that it is best on the whole to let the community find out their errors by their own experience, sad as it sometimes is. Those who take this ground assume, that the efforts which have been made for this object have been of a proper character. I think it to be clear that they have ordinarily not been so. There has been too much of ridicule and sarcasm. These are means which are appropriate to a certain extent, as auxiliaries to sober argument; but they never should be relied upon, as the only, or the chief, instruments in combatting error. There has also been too much of denunciation, and calling of hard names. There has not been, on the other hand, enough of calm, candid and patient discussion on the part of physicians with the well-informed, as they meet them from day to day. To the medical man quackery appears so nonsensical, that he has commonly no patience with those who embrace it. He does not remember that many of his own profession have, in their reasonings about cause and effect, committed some of the very same errors which have engendered that quackery. Perhaps, if he looks back upon his own course, he may find that he himself has at some time fallen into an error, which might have led him into empiricism, if he had been out of the profession, but which was prevented from producing this effect upon him by that sense of dignity, which characterizes the man of science, and by that disposition to careful scrutiny, which the pursuit of medical science is peculiarly apt to impart. He should therefore avoid being betrayed, by the ridiculousness of quackery, into the utterance of harsh expressions, or into too free an use of sarcasm. He should, on the contrary, endeavor to show any intelligent friend, who has chanced in some way to be deluded by empiricism, that he has been deceived, and point out to him just how it has been done. He should show him what the mistakes are which he has made, in relation to the connexion between cause and effect; and should endeavor to impress upon his mind the truth, that there is more necessity for cautious discrimination, in forming conclusions on this, than on any other subject in the wide range of science. He should show him how common it is in medicine, to attribute results to causes, which have had no agency in producing them; and that if physicians themselves are apt to commit this error, much more must they be, who are ignorant of medical subjects, and who have but limited means of observation.