These successive changes in popular remedies show, that the public have always been egregiously mistaken, whenever they have attributed to them such wonderful efficacy. Else the very high and extensive reputation gained by each could not have been so utterly lost in so short a time. If, for instance, a tithe of the fame of the Hygeian pills was well founded, the thousands of mouths that swallowed them would not have been, as they were almost in a twelvemonth, just as wide open to receive the magic pills of Brandreth. Either a large portion of the community have committed a great error, in ascribing such marvellous efficacy to these remedies; or they have committed a greater one in so soon discarding them. Either the one or the other of these errors has been committed, in regard to each one of the most popular remedies, that have succeeded each other in the favor of the public, from time immemorial—not one that has not had its _decline_, as well as its _rise_, and its _acme_. And what is remarkable is, that when once a remedy has thoroughly passed from the popular favor, no matter how great its fame has been, it never can be revived again, unless it be under an entirely new name, and with new pretensions. Why? Because it has been tried, and its reputation was found to be a splendid bubble that has burst and fallen. And the public, like the child, when a bubble has burst, has done with that one forever, and busies itself at once in raising another, which, in its turn, is succeeded by another, and so on to the end, if end there be, which seems to be hardly a possibility with the bubbles of quackery. FOOTNOTES: [4] Many varieties of weapon-ointment were used. Some of the articles in them which were considered most essential were powder of mummy, human blood, and moss from the skull of a thief hung in chains. It is a humiliating fact in the history of human wisdom, that Lord Bacon, the wisest man of his time, could only say of the pretended efficacy of this ointment, that he, himself, “as yet, is not fully inclined to believe it.” [5] The popular disposition to look to some one remedy for a disease, is seen in the conversations in every circle at the present time, in regard to the cholera. The inquiry is for some one specific remedy,—and physicians are constantly asked if something has not yet been discovered of this character. Though the newspapers are filled with new and _certain_ cures, no _new_ remedy has been discovered for this disease since its former visitation in this country. Physicians do however know better how to treat it, than they did then; but it is only because experience has taught them better _how_ to use the appropriate remedies, and not because any very important new medicines are added to the list of those which are applicable to this disease.