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    fatal tendency ? And would it not be better to employ medicines that are not so powerful in their effects , and that wait with a little more modesty , that nature in her operations may keep pace with them ? There cannot be a doubt .

    that , when the case is not perfectly understood , much mischief may follow the use of powerful drugs ; and , in truth , so little do we know of the inner parts of a living man , and so much are the symptoms of complaints confounded by a

    diversity in the habits and constitutions Wraen , that if the apothecary can assure his patient , that what he prescribes will do him no harm , 4 . e will do a great deal . So thought our ancestors on the subject of drugs , and they were timid ; and so , perhaps , will posterity think

    Once more . There is certainly a fashion in medicine as much as in any other thing . The cut of the mantle / or the contour of a cap , does not more depend on the pleasure of a fashionable belle in the circle oi

    St . James ' s , than does the prevailing medicine , and the name to be given to a complaint , depend on some doctor $ f eminence in the great city . And as the Marchan ^ des de modes are not successful in

    xetaining their celebrjty long , so the nostrums and the names of the most celebrated medical men fall into disrepute in consequence of same new adventurer starting in another course .

    The names of diseases depend upon fashion . In the writings of the Spectator we read of the spleen and the vapours . These terms , which were applied , the ; oae to the male , tfoe other to the female sex , are now supplanting by th $ less expressive term , nervous . Ner-

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    vous complaints may be imagined to be diseases of modern birth , but they are only known under a new name . That what are now

    called nervous are more frequent than formerly , there cannot be a doubt ; for this is a favourite term to cover the ignorance of every young , and every doubtful practitioner of the day * The

    complaints that are really nervous assume so great a variety of forms , that a medical gentleman is perfectly safe in declaring , that . ' his patient is nervous , and the complaint itself is thought to be so

    prevalent , that he incurs little rist of offending by prescribing a r ^* medy for suclia complaint . Nay , should he be called to Betty the cook , or to Thomas the groom , he may still have recourse to his

    bottle of aether . We have lately heard much talk of a typhus fever ; our fathers knew it not * They , plain honest folks , called it the brain fever , and sometimes the putrid fever ; we have found a

    more learned name , and possibly our posterity will refine it back again to its old vulgar , but intelligible appellation . We have also the ephemeral epithets of the influenza , the reigning fever , and now we talk about the Walcheren

    fever , most fortunate distinctions for a tribe of complaints , that defy the skill of our Galens to describe them * That there is also a fashion in the administration of medicines , noqe can doubt , who have

    observed the proceedings of the medical gentlemen ; and these medicines seem in point of estimation to go rpMjpd th , e wheel of fortune . Those which we , re formerly esteemed tp bp the rankest poison , are now the darlings of the sons of Hippo-

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    On the Revival of Knowledge long lost * 4 & 7

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1810, page 437, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2408/page/13/