Doctrine the first is, that a man who has devoted himself to a particular calling is to be considered necessarily ignorant thereof, --and that certain babes and sucklings in that particular branch of knowledge, and all others, are to be accepted as the true oracles with regard to its mysteries. Doctrine the second is, that every new theory accepted by any number of persons has some important truth at the bottom of it. The first of these doctrines has its real meaning. It is true that there may be a common feeling of justice in the minds of ignorant people which shall override the decisions of a learned Chief Justice. It is true that a man may brutalize himself by a contemplation of theological cruelties, until decent parents are ashamed to have their children listen to his libels on the Father of All. It is true that a physician may become such a drug-peddling routinist, that sensible mothers see through him, and know enough to throw his trash out of the window as soon as he turns his back. The second doctrine has its real meaning. Until men turn into beasts, they must have some arguments addressed to their reason before they will believe, and still more before they will act. Spiritualism has its significance, as an appeal from the gross materialism and heathen ideas of another life so commonly entertained. Mormonism has its logic, as an appeal from the enforced celibacy of one sex, and to the Oriental Abrahamic instincts of the other. Homoeopathy has its fraction of sanity, as a protest against that odious tendency of physicians to give nauseous stuff to people because they are ailing, which sickened the pages of old pharmacopoeias with powders of earthworms and _album Græcum_, and even now makes illness terrible where it reigns unrebuked. Swallow these two paragraphs of concession as the infusion drawn from those two doctrines laid down at starting, and throw away the effete axioms as fit only for old women to coddle and drench themselves withal. Having done this, the reader is ready for the book the title of which we have prefixed. DR. BIGELOW'S name is a guaranty that it shall contain many thoughts in not over-many words. It is a pledge that we shall be emancipated from all narrow technicalities and officinal idols, while following his guidance. As a man of rare sagacity and wide range of knowledge, a man of science before he became a leading practitioner in the highest range of his profession, a philosopher whom his fellows have thought worthy to preside over their deliberations, a physician whom his brethren have honored with their highest office, though no man among them ever assailed the pleasing and profitable delusions of his craft so sharply,--he may well be listened to, even though he has given his life to the subject on which he writes.