The physician is continually meeting with evidence, that the community generally have no adequate ideas of the necessity for discrimination in medical practice. He is every day called to patients, who tell him that they have taken some patent pills, or perhaps some pills which they chanced to have in the house, and which they supposed must be “good,” as they express it, though they may not know where they came from, or what they are commonly used for; and this is done by many, without regard to the kind of malady under which they are suffering. All cases must first be dosed by pills, to which they attach this general idea of being “good;” and then, if they do not hit the disease with this random shot, they send for the doctor, not however with the belief, that his shooting will be any less at a venture, but because he may have a greater variety of ammunition. One of the strongest evidences that the community have a very imperfect conception of the varieties of disease, and of the necessity of accurate discrimination, is the propensity to look for some one grand remedy for all diseases. This propensity is exceedingly common, and exists in every variety of degree. Some, I may say many, have the full belief that there is such a remedy, and try every vaunted medicine that comes along, in their search after the great catholicon, or elixir vitæ. Disease they suppose, in the language of quacks, and we may add of some physicians also, to be an unit, and the remedy for it must therefore be an unit also. Others, (and these form a large portion of the community,) while their ideas are less distinct and exclusive, are still governed in a great measure by this same prevailing notion. They have some favorite remedy, which they use for complaints of almost every kind. The remedy may not always be the same, and commonly is not. The ‘universal cure’ does not ordinarily last a great while, but is at length supplanted by some other, just as universal, which in its turn, is also to be supplanted. Every year, not to say every month, brings to some people a new grand catholicon.