There is much truth and pertinence in some of the above remarks, and they apply nearly to the general practice of the present day. The farces and whims of people require often as much discrimination on the part of the physician as the disease itself. Those who know best how to flatter such caprices, are frequently the best paid for their trouble. Nervous diseases are always in season, and it is here that some professional dexterity is pardonable. Nature, when uninterrupted, will often do more than art; but our inability upon all occasions to appreciate the efforts of nature in the cure of diseases, must always render our notion, with respect to the powers faith, liable to numerous errors and deceptions. There is, in fact, nothing more natural, and at the same time more erroneous, than to lay the cure of a disease to the door of the last medicine that had been prescribed. By these means the advocates of amulets and charms, have ever been enabled to appeal to the testimony of what they are pleased to call experience in justification of their pretensions, and egregious superstitions; and cases which, in truth, ought to have been classed, or rather designated, as lucky escapes, have been triumphantly pulled off as skilful cures; and thus, medicines and medical practitioners, have alike received the meed of unmerited praise, or the stigma of unjust censure. Of all branches of human science, medicine is one of the most interesting to mankind: and, accordingly as it is erroneously or judiciously cultivated, is evidently conducive to the prejudice or welfare of the public. Of how great consequence is it, then, that our endeavours should be exerted in stemming the propagation of errors, whether arising from ignorance, or prompted by motives of base cupidity, in giving assistance to the disseminations of useful truths, and to the perfection of ingenious discoveries. FOOTNOTES: [110] Lib. viii. chap. 2. 5. [111] Langhorne's Life of Mr. Collins [112] Reverii Praxis Medica, p. 188. [113] John Ailkin, author of the Navy Surgeon, 1742. Sec Demonologia, p. 64 et seg. CHAPTER XIII. ON TALISMANS--SOME CURIOUS, NATURAL ONES, ETC. The Egyptian amulets are not so ancient as the Babylonian talismans, but in their uses they were exactly similar. Some little figures, supposed to have been intended as charms, have been found on several mummies, which, at various times, have been brought to Europe. Plutarch informs us that the soldiers wore rings, on which the representation of an insect resembling our beetle, was inscribed; and we learn from Aelian, that the judges had always suspended round their necks a small figure of Truth formed of emeralds. The superstitious belief in the virtues of talismans is yet far from being extinct, the Copths, the Arabians, the Syrians, and, indeed, almost all the inhabitants of Asia, west of the Ganges, whether Christians or mahometans, still use them against possible evils.