Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

Le Sage, though he long languished in the shade of poverty and obscurity, in a little cottage on the borders of the Seine, and in the neighbourhood of Paris, where he gave birth to that excellent satire which has immortalized his name, was a physician of skill, experience, and great reading.

Those who for more than fifty years have been charmed with his wit, and struck with admiration at his profound knowledge and intimate acquaintance with the ways of mankind--their arts and schemes--their tricks and contrivances--their inconsistencies and contradictory vagaries and phantoms--little foresaw that the absurd and murderous system he had so successfully ridiculed and exploded, would so soon be revived, and so soon give rise to a necessity for the exertion of similar talents against similar folly and wickedness.

Some physicians, while they would avoid the dangers of this violent and desperate remedy, set up by some for a panacea, would wholly exclude it from the practice of medicine; and indeed it has been advanced by many ingenious physicians, that venesection in conjunction with emetics has destroyed more than the word--but it is the observation of the great Latin poet: Homines, dum vitia vitant, in contraria currunt. But without running in contraries, Humanity loudly calls on the obstinate adherents to the violent system, to advert now and then to the maxim, MEDIUM ITER TUTISSIMUS IBIS.

PARACELSUS.