“‘C’est une erreur de penser que le sang soit nécessaire à la conservation de la vie; on ne peut trop saigner un malade;’ are the words put into the mouth of our doctor, in the character of Sangrado by the facetious Le Sage. Hecquet, both in theory and practice, carried the _anti-phlogistic_ system to a greater extent than any other man, and defended the ‘_boisson_’ and the _bleeding_, saying, ‘J’ai pour garants de mon sentiment, sur le _Régime maigre_, les médecins les plus fameux, tant anciens que modernes.’ He was a conscientious practitioner of his own eccentric doctrines, and it was perfectly consistent with his character, that ‘loin d’imputer la mort du chanoine à la boisson et aux saignées, il sortit en disant, d’un air froid, qu’on ne lui avait pas tiré _assez de sang_, ni fait boire _assez d’eau chaude_.’ “The practice of _bleeding_ was carried to a singular extent in France, and it was the fashion, at one time, to bleed on the opposite side to the part affected; if the pain was on the right side, they bled in the left arm, and _vice versâ_. Pierre Brissot produced a civil war in the medical world by writing against the custom, and, in the year 1600, was driven into exile, by edict of the University of Paris, for thus opposing the established practice. SIR CHARLES SCARBOROUGH “Was a man of great versatility of talents; he wrote a ‘Treatise on Trigonometry,’ and a ‘Compendium of Lilly’s Grammar;’ gave lectures on mathematics at Cambridge, and on anatomy in London. His epitaph records that he was Inter Medicos Hippocrates, Inter Mathematicos Euclides. He read the lecture founded by Dr. Caldwell, at Barber-surgeons’ Hall, for many years; where he was the first who attempted to account for muscular strength and motion on geometrical principles. He was a man of amiable manners and great vivacity of conversation. Seeing the Duchess of Portsmouth eat to excess, he said to her, with his usual frankness, ‘Madam, I will deal with you as a physician should do; _you must eat less, use more exercise, take physic, or be sick_.’ DR. PITCAIRN “Was a great enemy to quackery and quacks, of whom he used [p332] to say that there were not such liars in the world, except their patients. A relation of his, one day, asking his opinion of a certain work on fevers, he observed, ‘I do not like fever curers; we _may guide_ a fever—we cannot _cure_ it. What would you think of a pilot who attempted to quell a storm? Either position is equally absurd. We must steer the ship as well as we can in a storm; and in a fever we can only employ patience and judicious measures, to meet the difficulties of the case.’”