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For precept and practice in surgery never

Were labours more deep, operations more clever; (r) While doctors in physic past notions revising,

Have wrought in prescriptions a change most surprising: (s)

(r) The very laconic manner in which the great Sir Noodle slurs over the above topics of literature prompts me to form a shrewd surmise, that he is no better acquainted with surgery and physic than myself; although, from consulting the Reviews, I am fully enabled to catalogue some names that are universally regarded with the highest consideration by every practitioner in their respective professions. After having thus candidly confessed my inability to appreciate these works from actual perusal, I shall beg leave to enrol the name of Bell, who has written upon Anatomy, together with Foote, Abernethy, Monro, and Aikin; Baillie on morbid Anatomy; Farre on Diseases of the Liver; Bree on the Chest, and Pemberton on the Bowels. While, as physicians, Letsom, Jenner, Kerrison, Latham, and Powel, have no less exerted their abilities to disseminate that useful knowledge for the benefit of the human race, which long practice and experience have enabled them to perform.

(s) In medicine, we have treatises, written in the 18th century, to prove that a salt meat diet is good for the gout; and that colds do not proceed from damps or moist clothing.

Since health, it is found, more on nature depends
Than back'd by a legion of physical friends :
Not so proves the case with each pestle's displayer,
Who, living by drugs, proves humanity's slayer;
Disdaining to budge from each lucrative notion,
'Tis draught, pill, emetic, and purgative potion,
Till stomach reduc'd to extremity's lot,

With dosing, poor patient at length goes to pot;
And cries with the Greek, when with death hard he

wrestles,

I'm dish'd, d-n their souls! by these knights of the pestles! (t)

A physician at Lyons published a dissertation on beards and mustachios, affirming that they promote strength; and that the present age might not be without men as strong as Sampson were they permitted to grow.

(t) According to the Greek historians, we are informed that Alexander upon his death-bed uttered the following exclama

tion:

Pero turba medicorum.

I die by the help of too many physicians.

I believe the number of my departed countrymen who could have joined in this chorus would be nearly as countless as the stars in the heavens, or the grains of sand in the sea.

Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, says,

"Where there

be many lawyers, and many physicians, it is a manifest sign of a distempered melancholy state, as Plato long since com

plained."

Musical Doctors,

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;

The motions of his spirits are dull as night,

And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted.

As physical doctors so late grac'd my strain,
Professors of music may next share the vein;

True harmony's offsprings, whose soul-thrilling mea

sure

Oft wafts me from earth to the regions of pleasure:

But as sometimes an orb brighter 'lumines the

sphere,

So Busby o'er crotcheteers reigns overseer: (u)

(u) No creature breathing stands better with himself than Doctor Busby: there is but one personage left, when he departs these terrestrial regions, who can possibly fill up the vast vacuum in perfectibility which must attend his exit, and that individual, O reader! is the doctor's son! But to be serious: this writer has very lately presented to the world his translation of Lucretius, which from the specimens I have read (for, to be candid, I have not perused the work throughout) is written in that pompous style which might be expected to flow from the writer in question. It cannot, however, be denied, that the doctor understood his original well, and upon the whole this labour will not disgrace his name. Of the rejected Address I shall say nothing; for as the conduct of our author has been sufficiently before the public on a former occasion, it would only be reviving an old grievance. In his harmonic vocation Dr. Busby some years back published a musical dictionary, which is concise and ably executed; but whatsoever may be his talents as a composer, I will not undertake to say further than that the music published under his name has never excited those emotions which the notes of a Jackson, Shield, Birnie, and Stevenson, never fail to excite in my breast.

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