It may therefore be matter of grave consideration for me whether under all circumstances it would not be highly expedient to prepare a semiramised edition of this Opus, under the Title of the Family Doctor. It may be matter for consultation with my Publishers, to whose opinion as founded on experience and a knowledge of the public taste, an author will generally find it prudent to defer. Neither by them or me would it be regarded as an objection that the title might mislead many persons, who supposing that the “Family Doctor” and the “Family Physician” meant the same kind of Book, would order the Opus under a mistaken notion that it was a new and consequently improved work, similar to Dr. Buchan's, formerly well known as a stock-book. This would be no objection I say, but on the contrary an advantage to all parties. For a book which directs people how to physic themselves ought to be entitled Every Man his own Poisoner, because it cannot possibly teach them how to discriminate between the resemblant symptoms of different diseases. Twice fortunate therefore would that person have reason to think him or herself, who under such a misapprehension of its title should purchase the Family Doctor! Ludicrous mistakes of this kind have sometimes happened. Mr. Haslewood's elaborate and expensive edition of the Mirror for Magistrates was ordered by a gentleman in the Commission of the Peace, not an hundred miles from the Metropolis; he paid for it the full price, and his unfortunate Worship was fain to take what little he could get for it from his Bookseller under such circumstances, rather than endure the mortification of seeing it in his bookcase. A lady who had a true taste as well as a great liking for poetry, ordered an Essay on Burns for the Reading Society of which she was a member. She opened the book expecting to derive much pleasure from a critical disquisition on the genius of one of her favourite Poets; and behold it proved to be an Essay on Burns and Scalds by a Surgeon! But in this case it would prove an Agreeable Surprize instead of a disappointment; and if the intention had been to mislead, and thereby entrap the purchaser, the end might be pleaded, according to the convenient morality of the age, as justifying the means. Lucky indeed were the patient who sending for Morrison's Pills should be supplied with Tom D'Urfey's in their stead; happy man would be his dole who when he had made up his mind in dismal resolution to a dreadful course of drastics, should find that gelastics had been substituted, not of the Sardonian kind, but composed of the most innocent and salutiferous ingredients, gently and genially alterative, mild in their operation, and safe and sure in their effects. On that score therefore there could be no objection to the publication of a Family Doctor. But believing as I believe, or rather, knowing as I know, that the Book is free from any such offence,