“To drop, however, all idle complaints of public neglect, let us go to the more useful inquiry whether or not the principles propounded in these _Reports_ have been confirmed by subsequent and more extensive experience. To this inquiry I answer directly and fearlessly, that in the interval between the present time and the year 1815 (the date of that publication) the practice recommended has succeeded in cases very numerous and of extreme variety, and I can promise the practitioner who will try it fairly and judge with candour that he will experience no disappointment. I say, _let him try it fairly_. I do not assert that it will succeed in cases where the powers of life are sunk, in confirmed hectic fever, in ulcerated cancer, in established chronic disease, or in the decrepitude of old age. I may have attempted the relief of such cases in an early stage of my experiments, but experience speedily demonstrated the hopelessness of such attempts. But let subjects be taken not far advanced in life, let them be _tabid_ children (for example) with tumid abdomen, swelled joints, and depraved appetites, or with obstinate cutaneous diseases, erythema, _scabus_, rickets, epileptic convulsions (not grown habitual by long continuance). But a practitioner in moderate practice will find no difficulty in selecting proper subjects, if he is himself actuated by a regard to humanity united to principles of honour. “Moreover, let not the patient, particularly if arrived at mature age, expect to receive a perfect cure. In many cases the consequences are rather preventive than curative. This I hold to be no objection. It is enough, surely, if a disease which, from its nature, might be expected to be continually on the increase, is obviously checked in its progress, if the symptoms become more and more mild, and if a human being is preserved in comfortable existence who would otherwise have been consigned to the grave.” He devoted his great medical knowledge and experience particularly to the cure or mitigation of cancer. In the letter, from which we have already quoted, he informs his correspondent of this interesting fact:--