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If we look back to the origin of Medicine, we shall find its first foundations to be owing to mere chance, unforeseen events, and natural instinct. In the early ages the sick were placed in cross-ways, and in other public places, to receive the advice of those passengers who knew an efficacious remedy suitable to their disorder; and the better to preserve the memory of a remarkable cure, both the disease and the remedy were engraven on pillars, or written on the walls of temples, that patients in the like cases might have recourse to them for instruction and relief. Thus, what mere accident had discovered, was registered in those chronicles of health. This art arose from repeated trials and long experience, which gave an insight into the virtues of herbs and plants, metals and minerals.

Amongst this number are to be reckoned Baillie, Pepys, Saunders, and Latham, Vaughan, Pincard, Heberden, Sims, Rowley, and many others of established reputation or rising celebrity, in that great centre of genius and science, the metropolis. Likewise those ornaments of the country, Parry and Haygarth, of Bath; Bree, Carmichael, Gilby, the Johnstones, &c. of Birmingham; Page and Wall, of Oxford; Lubbock, of Norwich; Wilson, of Worcester; Currie, of Liverpool; Baddeley, of Chelmsford; Mackie, Hacket, and Whiteman, of Southampton.

It has been elsewhere observed, by the Author of the preceding Poem, that it should always be considered as amongst the foremost of the duties of a Physician to assuage the mind, as well as relieve the person of his patient; and although a press of daily practice makes it necessary that he should set a just value upon time, he should never be governed by the stop-watch, to hurry away from the invalid, who he believes might be as much assisted by his Physician's society as by his prescription. On the contrary, it should be his constant practice to solace and cheer, by the prevailing aids of gentle and encouraging conversation, as much as by medicine; and if he really feels for the sufferings of man in general, and of his patient in particular, he would be disposed to devote many of those minutes not seized upon by other engagements, to quiet the throbbing pulse, and incline the wakeful eye to that sleep which, indeed, “ministers to both a body and a mind diseased,” and so often really “knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.” An apparently slight, but in truth a most important office! Few, it is presumed, of the readers of the poem before them, who have not, at one time or another, by some one of the innumerable maladies “to which our flesh is heir,” been consigned to the chamber of disease; and of these, we will venture to say, there is not a single being who has not felt his languor of body and misery of mind gain somewhat of strength and ease, or additionally to groan under the aggravation of both, as the medical gentleman called in, whether physician, surgeon, or apothecary, has been of a courteous or stern demeanour. The failing frame and the desolated spirit are as much raised by the one as sunk by the other. A kind look, a soft word, is sometimes of the utmost consequence: and the breath of hope in life, or of a happy reception in heaven after death, though conveyed in whispers to the ear and heart of a sick person, has done more than all the nostrums of the Materia Medica. The Author has been the more earnest to bring forward this quality, because, having been often a nurse and companion of the sick and sorrowful, he has sometimes seen in medical practitioners the very reverse of this amiable conduct adopted—a fundamental, and not unfrequently a fatal error. He hesitates not, finally, to say on this subject, that next to professional skill, the modes and manners of applying it, of addressing and conversing with the valetudinary, whatever be their disorder, should be relied upon as much as the most salutary medicines he can give: they are the best lenitives of pain; they are the soft balms of a distempered imagination, and most potent cathartics of the body and soul of man.

Sana mens in corpore sano.

Author of an excellent Practical Enquiry into the Causes of Asthma, a work highly spoken of by Drs. Currie and Gregory: and the principles laid down in the Enquiry are confirmed by a most successful practice by the ingenious Author.

These observations apply and extend to a true Surgeon and Family Apothecary, whose influence and power in their respective departments are no less important and vital, not only to the health but happiness of society.

Horat.

The residence of Colonel Wall, whose lady was recovered from a very dangerous illness, under the care of Dr. M. She still continues in the perfect enjoyment of health.