Such views as these, being prevalent among Thompsonians, both in regard to education and to the administration of medicine, it is not strange that Thompsonian practitioners should be a very ignorant set of men. In the remarks, which their special hatred for mineral medicines, leads them to make, they sometimes confound mineral and vegetable substances together. A Thompsonian of some considerable note, finding that a patient was applying hot camphor cloths to her side to relieve pain, said with an air of authority, ‘away with your camphor—none of your _minerals_ where I am.’—‘What _shall_ we put on doctor?’ asked a by-stander. ‘A hot bag of salt,’ said he. What _vegetable_ mine the salt came from I did not learn. So too, a Thompsonian lecturer told his hearers, that he disapproved of _all_ mineral medicines, such as mercury, _opium_, arsenic, &c. We occasionally hear some singular reasoning from Thompsonians in regard to the _modus operandi_ of medicines. Though this is confessedly a very difficult subject, they claim to know all about it, and give their opinions in regard to it without any hesitation. A patient once told me that, among the many physicians of whom she had suffered many things was a Thompsonian of considerable celebrity. He assured her that he could effect a cure in a very short time. He began his treatment with the process of steaming. Some heated bricks wrapped in wet flannel were placed around her in bed. Presently some one asked ‘what is it that smells so?’—‘O’ said the doctor, ‘it is the smell of the disease coming out through the pores—things are working nicely—this is just as I want to have it. Disease very often comes out in this way, through the pores, and sometimes I have known the smell to be so strong, that you could hardly stay in the room.’ As he went on to give his clinical lecture on ‘disease coming out through the pores,’ the smell grew worse and worse, as if to give emphasis to his remarks. But at length some one suggested that it was a little like the smell of burnt flannel, and on examination, it was found that one of the bricks had scorched the flannel which was around it. She at once told the doctor, that she had no farther use for his services, for if he did not know enough to distinguish between the smell of ‘disease coming out through the pores,’ and the smell of burnt flannel, he did not know enough to doctor her. This system of quackery has obtained a large share of its popularity, by the appeal which it has made to two forms of popular sentiment, which have been for some time peculiarly prevalent. I refer to the sentiment of _radicalism_, and to the prejudice against _mineral_ medicines.