The Charlotte Journal

[Published by Request.]

ADDRESS.

Delivered by Dr. Berkeley B. Thomas, to the Botanic-Medical Convention, at Macedonia Church, Meriwether County, Georgia, on the 12th of September, 1836.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Unaccustomed to speak in public, and being plain in habit and language, I must present, in a plain way, whatever I have to say on this occasion. But I am happy in knowing that the deep interest which the whole community have already taken in my subject, proves that it needs no ornaments of rhetoric to engage your respectful attention.

It is my purpose, by exhibiting facts and arguments, to show that the current objections to the Thomsonian system of Medical Practice, are unreasonable in the abstract, and inconsistent with the deductions of its opponents on other subjects; and that the prohibition of this practice, by State legislation, and the establishment of a medical monopoly, are a flagrant infringement of civil liberty, a tyrannical imposition upon the citizens, and an unwarrantable privation of one of the greatest blessings ever bestowed upon man.

Some one may ask in the outset, "Where is the necessity for adopting a new system of medical practice?" I answer, almost all eminent, candid and humane physicians, from Hippocrates, "the father of medicine," to the latest reformer of the nineteenth century, though taught in the colleges every thing that the industry and ingenuity of man have scraped together for thousands of years, and acquainted with all the fruitless experiments on the human system, with poisonous remedies, confess, with one united voice, "that the results have been fruitful in mischief, and almost barren of good."—(Abercrombie) They candidly acknowledge, lament and abandon their past errors and mal-practices, and direct their students and posterity to a different faith and practice; pointing to the fields and forests, they say, "there you will yet find some general remedy for all the aches and ills that flesh endures."—Rush

"The subject of medical science," say they, "is to prevent and cure disease." But the unchecked ravages of disease, sweeping away every year, as with a blast of the deadly sirocco, one-thirtieth part of all the human race, of all ages, conditions and constitutions, between the new born infant and the trembling and tottering traveller down life's last smooth descent—in spite of all that has ever been done to resist its progress, proclaim, with more than mortal tongue, the mortifying fact that, hitherto, this boasted healing art has not taught us to accomplish the end we had in view. (see Abercrombie, Lieutaud and Bigelow, declaring the fact.)

Granting then that the old practice is no help, ought the Thomsonian to be encouraged? Allow me to answer this question, by removing the most prominent objections that are raised against this system, and comparing the results of the practice with those of the fashionable theories.

It is objected to this system that it was devised by a man who had no knowledge of the human body, the nature of disease, or the character and action of remedies. I answer, the most minute acquaintance with the figure, situation and relative size of every portion of the human body, throws not the least light upon the action of internal agents on that body, either in health or in disease. The nature and character of this action is admitted by all sound physiologists, to depend altogether on the state of the body at the time of administration. The only true knowledge we have on this subject, is derived from observations on the effects of remedies actually given to cure disease. Why one medicine acts upon the stomach, another upon the bowels, a third upon the kidneys, a fourth upon the skin, (says Dr. Abercrombie,) we have not the smallest conception; we only know the uniformity of the fact. "Now this knowledge of the uniformity of facts, has been derived from observation of that action on the human body.—Dr. Thomson is as capable of observing that action as Dr. Abercrombie or any other M. D. "When learned doctors disagree, who are to decide? We answer, experience, whether through Samuel Thomson or Manasseh Cutler matters not, tho' neither of them was bred to physic—Dr. B. Waterhouse. T. R. vol. 1. page 301.) It certainly does not require much learning to discover whether a medicine acts as an emetic, a cathartic or a sudorific.

As to the nature of disease, it will be soon enough for the regular faculty to condemn Dr. Thomson for his ignorance of it, when they shall have agreed among themselves what it is. It is clearly manifest that, whatever be its true theory or the proper mode of treating it, these gentlemen have not made the discovery, themselves being witnesses. Dr. Abercrombie, of the University of Edinburgh, says, "There has been much difference of opinion among philosophers in regard to the place which medicine is entitled to hold among the physical sciences; for, while one has maintained that it rests upon an eternal basis, and has within it the power of rising to perfection, another as distinctly asserts that almost the only resource of medicine is the art of conjecturing." "Nature," says a physician, (a man of wit and philosophy,) "is fighting against disease; a blind man armed with a club, that is, the physician, comes to settle the difference. He lifts his club and strikes at random. If he strikes the disease, he subdues it; if he strikes nature, he kills her." An eminent physician, says Dr. Abercrombie, renounced his practice which he had exercised for 30 years, saying, "I am tired of guessing." The doctor then proceeds to give his own opinion; and, first, of the symptoms of disease, he says. "Since medicine was first cultivated as a science, a leading object of attention has ever been to ascertain the characters or symptoms, by which particular internal diseases are indicated, and distinguished from others which resemble them; but with the accumulated experience of ages bearing upon this important subject, our extended observation has only served to convince us how deficient we are in this department, and how often, in the first step of our progress, we are left to conjecture."

If such uncertainty hangs over our knowledge of the characters of disease, it will not be denied that at least an equal degree of uncertainty attends its progress. "When in the practice of medicine," continues the Doctor, "we apply, to new cases, the knowledge acquired by others which we believe to have been of the same nature, the difficulties are so great, that it is doubtful whether, in any case, we can be said to act upon experience."

The difficulties and sources of uncertainty are in fact so numerous and great, that those who have had the most extensive opportunities of observation, will be the first to acknowledge that our pretended experience must in general, sink into analogy, and even our analogy too often into conjecture. "An equal or even a more remarkable uncertainty attends all our researches into the action of external agents on the body, either as causes of disease or as remedies, in both which respects, their action is fraught with the highest degree of uncertainty."

It is said that, if disease were a unit, and the general remedy so universally attainable and easily applied, as Dr. Thomson pretends, some one of the faculty, in a diligent search of nearly four thousand years, with all the advantages under which they have investigated the subject, would certainly have discovered it. I answer, these investigations were made under the influence of false theories, with the expectation of finding the result where it did not and could not exist; and, therefore, the lights of previous experience, which the objector supposes to be advantageous, were, in fact, great disadvantages. For example, physicians searched, and do still search, for a cure for fever; in the light of the false theory that fever is disease, and ought to be met with a specific remedy, calculated directly to subdue it. Such a remedy they can never find, because fever is not disease; and because, to subdue it by direct means, as bleeding, freezing and starving, if persevered in till the reduction is complete, will surely destroy the life of the patient.

It is said, if the Thomsonian practice is far superior to the old practice, physicians would be the first to discover the fact, and to adopt it as the object of their long and eager pursuit. I answer one reason why they are slow to perceive the excellence of this new system, is, they have seen so many systems of medicine rise, report their day, and sink to rise no more, that they imagine this will soon share the same fate; and that, to stand out against this awhile, will screen them from the folly of catching at bubbles, and save them from disappointment, mortification and fruitless experiments. Another reason is, it humbles all their pride of learning, destroys all the honor and profit of their profession, and reduces them to a level with their fellow men of every rank and calling. But, notwithstanding all these disadvantages, some have had the curiosity to try, and the magnanimity to express their cordial approbation. Among these, I would name Dr. Samuel Robinson of Cincinnati. Drs. Hershey and Saunderson, late surgeons in the United States Army, Drs. Curtis and Caldwell, of Ohio; Drs. Eveleigh and Montgomery, of South Carolina; Dr. Ripley, of New Orleans: yes, and the venerable and learned Dr. B. Waterhouse, late Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic in the University of Cambridge, Massachusetts; and many others have tried and approved, but have not had the resolution to meet the ridicule, contempt and scorn that would be heaped upon them, should they publish their convictions.

As to regular physicians being best qualified to perceive and appreciate the excellence of the Thomsonian System and Practice, their prejudice makes them fear to trust it in cases which illustrate its vast superiority. They suppose its strange effects injurious to the human system, and therefore stop the process and return to their own folly, before the healthy reaction is effected. The action of our remedies being so different from that of those with which they are acquainted, it is not strange that they mistake it for the deadly operation of disease. They neither understand (according to Dr. Abercrombie already quoted) the nature of disease, nor are they able to counteract it. A fever rises; they commence their warfare against it. It rages with redoubled fury, and will run its course in spite of all their opposition. Sometimes that course is terminated happily—sometimes fatally; more frequently the termination is more speedy and favorable, when nothing is done to hinder its progress. All they do, is calculated to check its progress and put off the day of its crisis, till the constitution sinks under the fatigue, and the privation of nourishment, which always accompany their antiphlogistic, dietetic and depleting practice.

Better far better, let the fever rage and run its course, while the constitution has the strength that will probably turn it favorable, and then, if the patient escape death at all, he will escape that which is scarcely more desirable, the incurable chronic that is sure to render him miserable the rest of life.

Thus physicians treat acute disease, till by breaking down the constitution, they hasten it on the patient, and render it chronic in most cases where it does not destroy its victim outright. But, when the chronic stage has set in, as dyspepsia, rheumatism, liver complaint, consumption, &c., they excuse themselves for not curing, it by pronouncing it incurable.

Take the reverse form of disease, the cholera or cold plague. While some have been cured by running away from all medical practice, and multitudes more by using the simplest stimulating means, few that have been subject to the energetic mineral treatment, have come off, if they survived at all, with any thing better than a chronic aching of the bones, a clammy coldness and torpor of the flesh—in short, a physical and mental misery which will cease only with their lives. While these things continue a disgrace to the medical faculty, and the boasted wisdom of the schools, let them not say there is no room for improvement, that none but themselves know the nature of disease, or the character and effect of medical means.

Is it possible that, in this age of free inquiry, when the thought is buoyant and the mind is traversing all nature, to explore all her mysteries, that perfection in medicine should be sought in one fourth only? and that fourth confined to a few individuals, dealing in all manner of poisons, sporting with the lives of the community as they would with so many reptiles, and calling upon the legislatures to aid and assist them in punishing all persons that do not think upon all points precisely with themselves? Why not establish one faith of religion by law as well as one faith of medicine? It would be equally constitutional.

Why, we would respectfully demand, is prejudice so obstinate and unreasonable against the Botanic System? While the Bible and its divine Author, observe a profound silence with regard to mineral remedies, the tree of life, the balm of Gilead and the leaves for the healing of the nations, are frequently mentioned. Should it be objected that those expressions are figurative, our obvious reply is, that metaphors are happy only in illustrating truth so far as they are founded on nature, and secondly that God, in using these and like similitudes, has placed a high honor on the Botanic System.

Politicians need not object to this practice, because few have adopted it. Of all the wise legislators upon earth, how few have adopted your favorite republican form of government, which you consider the best in the world? Only a few of the inhabitants of these United States, and even many here would much prefer a monarchy.

Christians need not object to it on the same ground. How small a portion of the human race have adopted your faith in its purity. Is the contempt which "wise and mighty infidels" manifest against your creed, a proof that it is false and worthless, or injurious to society? Then use not the same objections against Thomsonism.

The learned need not object to it, because they did not discover it. They have indeed cultivated and brought to perfection many useful arts and sciences, but no intelligent person will deny that the most of the facts and principles were discovered and disclosed by persons in the humble walks of life. "Arkwright, a barber, invented the spinning jenny; Watt, the philosophical instrument maker, invented the steam engine; an iron-monger and glazier contrived the atmospheric engine; a burgomaster, the air pump; an idle nobleman, the mariner's compass; a merchant invented the thermometer; a glazier, the quadrant. Dr. Priestley, who discovered oxygen gas &c. and the great mineralogist, Harvey and Cartwright, the inventor of the power-loom, were clergymen; Rittenhouse was a farmer, and entirely a self-taught mechanic; Franklin was first a tallow chandler, then a printer; Fulton, a portrait painter; John Hunter, who created a new era in surgery, commenced life as a cabinet-maker: Rennie and Telford, both educated to dress stoves, were the greatest engineers whom the world ever saw; and Dr. Gurney of Cromwell, England, invented the locomotives for common road." Scarcely one of the many surprising and beautiful inventions of the prolific genius of New England has been made by persons familiar with the art to which it is auxiliary." (See Dr. J. K. Mitchell, on Practical Chemistry.) The declaration of the poet concerning the learned, is true on more subjects than morals.

Ask of the learned the way—the learned are blind:
This bids to shun, and that to serve mankind.

Let none despise the new practice for its simplicity. It is a very simple thing to get sick, and it may be, for aught physicians have yet learned, as simple a thing to get well again. It is a very simple thing to navigate the ocean and traverse the mountains by the power of steam; yet all the mechanics and philosophers in the world failed to discover the mode of doing it, till since SAMUEL THOMSON discovered and applied the medical properties of Lobelia.

It is objected that the practice, though good in itself, often falls into unskillful hands, and therefore is greatly abused. This objection holds equally good against the "regular practice." Every one knows that physicians seldom ever administer remedies or nurse the patient themselves. They give verbal or hastily written directions to the attendants, requiring them to administer such or such medicines on the appearance of such or such symptoms. They expect the attendants (who are too ignorant to be trusted with cayenne and lobelia, bayberry and raspberry leaves, gum myrrh and hot water!) to watch the pathology of the disease, and administer to every symptom, according to their scientific hair-splitting, the most deadly drugs to be found in the material world—drugs, the least mistake in the use of which may endanger the life of the patient.

In their several works for the use of families, physicians recommend the providing of emetics, cathartics, sudorifics, sedatives, the lancet, &c., to be used in cases of emergency. It is true they do not very well agree in these matters: for the celebrated Dr. Cooper says, "I have not included the lancet, because the letting of blood calls for skill and knowledge, both as to occasion and quantity. I have omitted opium and laudanum, for they are too dangerous to be trusted to unskillful persons." While the author of "The American Gentleman's Medical Pocket Book" lately published in Philadelphia, says, (page 15.) "A phial of laudanum should always have a corner in every traveller's trunk," and (page 13) "every man should know how to bleed. It is an operation so extremely easy in itself and so important in its effects, that it ought to be universally understood. There is no difficulty or mystery in the matter, and any one who has the command of his fingers and eyes, can acquire, in five minutes, that skill which may enable to save many a life;" and the gentleman is accordingly advised, (page 27) to "bleed the patient at the very beginning of every inflammatory attack." He has none of Dr. Cooper's fears of "danger" in trusting those means to "unskillful persons." But no matter how much doctors disagree and contradict each other, matters in which death is the result of error, the people (bless their simple hearts) believe them all infallible, and act like the son of the Emerald Isle, who obstinately refused to consider the danger of his condition, or to work at the ship's pump, "because he was only a passenger!" Yet such are the scientific medical advisers, who are so anxious to warn us of the danger of putting into the hands of every man a book carefully written, in which the nature of the human system, the character and progress of disease, the curative indications, and remedies hostile only to disease and in perfect harmony with life, are clearly and correctly delineated!

It is objected to the Botanic System, that it treats diametrically opposite forms of disease upon the same principles and with the same remedies. I answer, the New Practice is not alone in this respect. No symptoms can appear more directly opposite than those of cholera and bilious fever; of dyspepsia and hepatitis (or inflammation of the liver); of dysentery and costiveness; the chill and the fever; the scarlet fever and the dropsy: and yet no one will deny that mercury, in some form, is scientifically administered in all these cases; and I might in truth say almost every form of disease known to the faculty: "for, so inveterate is the passion for the use of mercury in medical practice, that it has passed into a proverb—deprive a physician of his mercury and his lancet, and he is like a lion without claws."

The celebrated Dr. Rush had out two principles involved in his curative process, the depleting and the stimulating. Dr. Brown did all by diffusive stimuli, and Dr. Graham, the celebrated medico-electrician of London, by the stimulant of aromatics, of music and electricity. Let all these men and their numerous followers be cashiered, before Dr. Thomson is complained of, for "curing all diseases with steam, lobelia, gum myrrh," &c.

It is objected to the Botanic System, that it is of low origin, and fostered only by ignorant and the superstitious of the land. If so, then the regular faculty and their adherents are sadly degrading themselves in spending their time and using their energies and influence, as they do, to sink it still lower! The fact, however, is not so. The practice shuns not the light. It requires not the mystery of technicalities to sustain it. Based upon common sense and sound philosophy, it is "plain, intelligible and systematic: showing medicine, as it ought always to have been shown, divested of all mystery; needing for its successful application, no extraordinary powers, no legerdemain, nothing but common sense, with common study and observation." This being the character of Dr. Thomson's system of medicine, we need not wonder much that the medical faculty have the strongest grounds in their power to hold themselves up in their destructive, and at the same time, mysterious career of dealing out poison, and calling it medicine. When I say the strongest grounds, I mean the power of legislation.

GROAN OF INDIGNATION THE LAW, which they are obliged to resort to, because reason, philosophy and facts are against them; and they could not hope successfully to oppose the Thomsonian, or any other law; and by covering themselves with all the shield of mystery that technical terms and the dead languages could afford; and thus closing every avenue by which the people could arrive at the knowledge of their art.

But the Botanic Practice, supported by truth only, challenges the strictest scrutiny, and has commanded the fullest approbation and the warmest support of men not a few, who need not fear to bring their learning and talents into collision with those of its most eminent opposers. Nor does it disappoint their expectations. The more they witness its effects, the more firmly are they convinced of its superiority. The better it is known, the higher does it rise in public estimation. The wider its influence is spread, the deeper is it seated in the affections of the people.

It is objected to the new system, that it is a plan devised by a man who was "too lazy to work," whereby he and his followers might make money. This comes with a very bad grace from the benevolent members of the medical faculty, who have procured the passage of a State law requiring, on a penalty of five hundred dollars, all the money that is paid out for medical services, by whomsoever rendered, to fall into the hands of some one of the infallible order. Yes, fellow-citizens, the medical faculty have published thousands of books under the titles of Family Adviser, Domestic Medicine, Family Physician, &c., professing to contain the quintessence of all they know of the art of preventing and curing disease, and for each copy they have received from three to five dollars.

Now, should any one of you, by his own exertions, get a minute acquaintance with this art, and administer a dose of medicine to his neighbor, or give him medical advice gratis, especially if he advise and administer according to said books, killing articles on killing principles, so as speedily to offer an occasion for a scientific visit and a long cash account, it is all very well, "just as it should be;" and if the patient dies, it is the will of God he died scientifically and according to the law of fashion; but should he dare to make any charge for his services, without first having served his apprenticeship in some one of the medical colleges, and paid the several medical professors for his tuition, and a sheepskin certificate to prove that they have received the price of his license; then, in that case, he must be visited with their displeasure in the shape of a five hundred dollar fine and imprisoned for two months to repair the injury which the cure has inflicted on said college, by his practical demonstration that disease may be cured without wasting so much time and money as the medical schools and laws require. And, should this humane prescriber so far offend against the infallibility of the privileged order, as to perform a cure by modes and means which they condemn, he must suffer the farther punishment of being called a "quack," or being slandered and belied with impunity, thwarted in his honest endeavors to do good and get a living, and arraigned before the bar of public opinion, and even public justice as a wilful and felonious murderer! for no other reason under heaven, than because our simple remedies are far superior in removing disease! "We (say the faculty, by their monopolizing law,) must be paid, whether we kill or cure; but none who wear not our mark, however valuable their services to the sick, are permitted to receive a reward: We will burn alcohol on the bodies of our patients, wrap them in blankets saturated with pints of turpentine, raise half the surface into blisters, draw the very life blood from their veins, and fill their systems with all manner of poisons; yes, and send multitudes to the dark land of silence, from which no one ever returns to tell of our cruelties! This we call humanity. (and Dr. Ace says it is treating the patient scientifically.) and while receiving the golden reward of our deeds, we will exert our best powers to convince the people that the "Thomsonian quacks" deserve to be hung for relieving themselves and their friends with such simple articles as bayberry, cayenne and lobelia. "We own (says Dr. Abercrombie) that our system is defective and the action of our remedies in the highest degree uncertain, except indeed that they have already destroyed more lives than the sword, pestilence and famine. See Dr. Robinson, page 114. But all this is nothing. We have made a law to sustain us in this "horrid devastation." (Boston Medical Journal, vol. xi. page 11) If we kill your wife, son, daughter or servant, you have no right to complain, because (Dr. Ace says) they were killed scientifically. We will envelop you in the fumes of burning sulphur, or cover your naked and tender bodies with ice, and you shall submit without a murmur, because it is scientific treatment; but if you should venture to disengage the cold from your bodies with the general steam or bathing water, we will make you pay us a fine of five hundred dollars. You may pity, as much as you please, the aged and infirm of barbarous and savage nations, who are poisoned to death to rid their murderers of the trouble of their maintenance; you may weep for the mother who sacrificed her innocent babe in the sacred waters of Indus, or gave it to the voracious reptile of the marshes; but we will give to you the same deadly poisons: we will sacrifice your sons and your daughters to our scientific theories, and the few that escape destruction, "as from running the gauntlet over red hot ploughshares," shall not drop a tear over suffering humanity, nor even withdraw their allegiance from our tyrannical and barbarous sway. It is true that your fathers sailed, suffered and bled to purchase your freedom, and to secure to you and your posterity, equal rights and privileges and free institutions; but before one half of them were in their graves, we deprived you of the greatest of all earthly blessings, the choice of a physician and nurse in your sickness, and the mode and means of preserving and restoring that health without which all other blessings were vain! The law we have procured, secures to us this privilege; and we are determined to punish the subject and the agent of every known violation."

Who of you fellow-citizens, will submit to such an imposition? Where are the philanthropic physicians, (of whom I am happy to believe there are many in our State) having their attention aroused and their eyes opened to the iniquity of this monopolizing and enslaving medical law, can desire its existence any longer?

"I allege, the show, and the splendor fancifully attached to medical science, affords no efficient employment and distinction if it affords no efficient protection to a solitary professor, nor to the whole medical faculty united- if there are no such with all their boasted advantages over the "empirics," the dealer in "nostrums," &c. &c. to obtain employment, without the aid of a special law to secure to themselves an exclusive patronage. How little must all their learning, all their labor, midnight studies, and poring over huge volumes of ponderous books, avail them in the eyes of the world!"

"Experience and Facts (says Dr. Waterhouse,) will confirm the truth, that the world has suffered more from learned impositions and quackery upon all subjects, than from ignorance," which is an obvious, undeniable truth.

That the regular medical practice is not worthy of the distinguished honor and exclusive privileges that our legislators have conferred upon it, is proved not only by the testimony of Dr. Abercrombie, already cited, but by that of almost every candid physician the world has ever produced.

Permit me to draw your attention to the fact, that almost every distinguished physician in every age has started a new theory of his own. Indeed it may be safely affirmed that ingenious innovation (not extraordinary success in practice) is almost the only thing that ever gave eclat to any "scientific physician." Hippocrates, Galen, Celsius, Sydenham, Cullen, Graham, Darwin, Brown, Rush, Good, Hahnemann, Broussais, Lieutaud, &c. are striking examples. Some of these remodeled the opinions of others, adding only a few of their own; but many of them struck out entirely new theories; thus by their labors as well as their assertions, declaring that all that had preceded their day were radically defective, in not positively pernicious! Dr. Lieutaud says in substance, page first of his "Synopsis of Medical Practice," there was so much error in the practice of medicine in his time, that he thought it best to reject the whole, and to confine his exertions, in the exercise of the healing art and the formation of a sounder theory, to the principles developed by his own thirty years experience in practice! If Dr. Lieutaud's experience of thirty years is worth more than that of all the physicians who had preceded him (on which very account his translator says, "I am not worthy to hold a candle to him,") on what principles can you reject the forty years experience of Samuel Thomson, who had the advantage of exercising an observation and a judgment untrammeled by the false theories of the schools?

Shall our laws preserve to us equal rights and privileges in government, religion, the choice of habitation and the pursuit of happiness-even, of everything but that of securing our health, the only thing that renders even life desirable? Shall we spurn from us a religious establishment, which would require us to commit the keeping of our conscience to a privileged order of men and pay them a high premium for the trust, and yet tamely submit to a yoke not much less galling in the subjection of the treatment of our diseased bodies to an order of men whose skill in curing them seems, to us at least, to consist in trying how much they can injure the power of life, and how much poison they can infuse into the system, without thrusting the vital spark entirely from its clay tenement?

We do not wish the new system of practice placed on the ground now occupied by the old. Far from it. We wish no medical practice protected exclusively by law. We would secure to all physicians a reasonable reward for their services, voluntarily solicited and faithfully rendered. Thus the people would have an opportunity of determining, by their fruits, which is best, and their own safety is the best guarantee that they would make the proper choice.

But, it may be said, we have proof that the regular practice is good, and that yours is pernicious. What evidence, we ask, have you that the regular practice is good! The testimony of some of its own advocates, (interested witnesses) whom you would not receive in common courts of justice, while most modes of others, the most honest and learned among them, declare that, so far from being good, more human lives have been sacrificed to its successive theories than to the sword, pestilence and famine. (What mischief have we done exclaims Dr. Rush, under the erroneous impulse of false theories.) And not a few of these have declared our practice safe and efficacious, (see the letters of Drs. Montgomery, Eveleigh, Saunders, Hersey, Ripley, Curtis and Waterhouse in the Thomsonian Recorder.) You have also the testimony of the Thomsonians, who are as able to tell the truth in favor of their system, as M.D.'s are in favor of theirs, that our system is always safe and efficacious in the removal of all diseases properly so called. But we have this advantage, that you look in vain among the advocates of this system for testimony that it kills even the very few that die under its application.

Of the scientific system, Dr. Abercrombie says, "they that have had the most extensive opportunity of observation, are the first to acknowledge that our pretended experience must in general sink into analogy, and even too often into conjecture." Of the Botanic system it is exactly the reverse. Whenever it gets a foothold, it surprises the attentive observer by curing, almost as if by magic, a variety of diseases which the medical faculty have long considered incurable. Thousands and tens of thousands in our land, whom the sons of medical science had long considered beyond the reach of all remedial means have been perfectly restored by this practice; and not a few hundreds have been snatched, as it were, from the very jaws of the grim monster, who was apparently fast hurrying them off to his dark and dreary mansions.

But where are the cures by the regular practice of persons whom skillful Thomsonians have been compelled to abandon as hopeless? They that have the most experience in this practice, have the strongest faith in its theory and the most implicit confidence in its remedies. In vain will you look among them for the man who, like Graham, Brown, Lieutaud, Waterhouse, Abercrombie, Saunders, Montgomery, Ripley, Caldwell, and a hundred others, after practicing from ten to forty years on this new plan, will turn about and denounce it as more ruinous to human life than the sword, pestilence, and famine. The simple fact that the Thomsonians of every grade of intellect, habit and education, all agree in their testimony respecting the value of this system and its remedies, and that too, often to the sacrifice of their reputation and estate, amounts to a moral demonstration that it is based on everlasting truth, and worthy of all the commendation they have bestowed upon it.

Whether this be deemed so or not, let not our legislators fear that we shall long caress in our bosoms, the reptile whose fangs are once known to administer the deadly poison. No: It is its failure to relieve, in every attack of disease that would not have been repelled without its aid; and its well known tendency to plant in the system, the seeds of some chronic misery, and a premature death, that have destroyed so much of our confidence in the regular practice, and given rise to all those experiments, patent and concealed remedies, &c. which the faculty have been pleased to stigmatize with the title of "quackery." and whose effects, instead of their own scientific poisoning, starving and other savage cruelties, they so much affect to deplore. We well know that scarlet fever, measles, the poisons of serpents, the cholera, all ill-conditioned sores, &c. &c. are far less dangerous in the hands of old women, the untutored Indian, or even dame nature herself, than in those of "the regular physicians." The "scientific quackery" then, we are resolved at all hazards to reject. If the Thomsonian practice prove itself no more worthy of our confidence, (less it certainly cannot.) it will soon share the same fate. All we ask is permission to give it a trial.

It were worse than mockery in us, like the pagan who allowed his priest to perish in the waves rather than profane him with a touch in effecting his rescue, to imagine that tolerating the Botanic practice, will depreciate the credit of the healing art or be injurious to the community.

Guided by the genius of liberty and encouraged by the example of our revolutionary fathers, let us use every laudable exertion to liberate our minds from the tyrannical influences of medical law and popular prejudice, which would deprive us of the constitutional and natural right of thinking and acting for ourselves, in a matter which concerns our best interest and our highest earthly happiness.

Such tyrannical, oppressive and monopolizing laws, are as unhallowed as the tyranny of eastern despots. And to such I would exclaim- procul, O Procul, este Profani. But with the people, the Botanic system will flourish to the ends of the earth. It is a system of imperishable fame, notwithstanding all opposition to it.