be lamented that no satisfactory proof can be given, that either of them were ever cured by medicine. Much might, perhaps, be done towards the improvement of the practice, if physicians would follow the model which the late Dr. Heberden has left them in his Commentaries; in my judgment, one of the best books which this, or any other age, or country, has produced on the subject. The College of Physicians have done something towards leading practitioners to this mode, by abolishing the vain titles heretofore given to drugs and compositions, attributing to them qualities which experience by no means warrants us in believing they possess. But even in the complaints mentioned above, and many more might be added, the physician may be often able to give directions that may retard their progress, and enable the patient to pass his life with some degree of comfort; and he who limits his endeavours to procuring these advantages, will well deserve their grateful acknowledgments, he will also escape the censures so frequently thrown on the professors of the art. "Turbâ medicorum perii,” a multitude

multitude of physicians have destroyed me, was the inscription the Emperor Adrian ordered to be put upon his monument. It would be useless, perhaps in some degree mischievous, to recite the many sarcastic speeches that have been recorded to degrade the practice of medicine. The effect they should have, and which, indeed, they have had on the more judicious practitioners, is not, on every occasion, to load their patients with drugs, which, when not absolutely necessary, deserve a different name than that of medicines. With no great impropriety they may be called poisons; for, although they may not kill, yet if they nauseate, and destroy the tone of the stomach, and have the effect of checking and preventing the powers of the constitution in their efforts to expel the disease, they cannot fail of doing much mischief. Baglivi, addressing himself to young practitioners, says, “Quam paucis remediis curantur morbi! Quam plures è vita tollit remediorum farrago!" and Sydenham advises, in many cases, rather to trust to nature, it being a great error to imagine that every case requires the assistance of art.

It should be considered, that as there are some diseases for which medicine has not yet found out any cure, there are others for which no medicines are required, the constitution being of itself, or only aided by rest, and a simple and plain diet, sufficient to overcome them. The French therefore say, with much good sense, "Un bouillon de choux fait perdre cinque sous au medecin," a mess of broth hath lost the physician his fee. That this adage is ancient may be concluded from the smallness of the fee assigned to the doctor. The Undertaker, in the Funeral, or Grief à-la-mode, among his expenses, mentions ten pounds paid for a Treatise against Water-gruel, "a damned healthy slop, that has done his trade more mischief," says, "than all the faculty." The Spaniards on this subject say, "Al enfermo que es vida, agua le es medicina," the patient who is not destined to die, will need no other medicine than water; such is their opinion of the efficacy of abstinence. "It is no less disgraceful,” Plutarch says, "to ask a physician, what is easy, and what is hard of digestion, and what will agree with the stomach, and what

he

el

not,

not, than it is to ask what is sweet, or bitter, or sour." Our English adage, which is much to this purport, and with which I shall close this essay is, "Every man is a fool or a phy sician, at forty."

Facilius sit Nili Caput invenire.

It would be easier to find the source of the Nile. This has in all ages been considered as so difficult, that the proverb was used to represent something scarcely possible ever to be effected this opinion was not formed until after a variety of experiments had been made with a view to its discovery. But the distance of its head or source from any of the parts of Africa that had been visited or were known to Europeans, or to the inhabitants of the northern parts of that vast continent, is so great, and the countries lying between them inhabited by such numerous tribes of savages, that all the expeditions formed for that purpose had failed, and so many lives had been lost in the attempt, that the project had for many

P 4

many ages been laid aside. That one of its sources is now known, is owing to the genius or industry of certain Portuguese missionaries. Mr. Bruce, indeed, assumes to himself the merit of having made this discovery, but it had been very circumstantially described by Lobo, in his account of Abyssinia, whose work on the subject was translated by Dr. Johnson, and by Sir Peter Wyche, in his "Short Relation of the River Nile," translated by him from the Portuguese, and published by order of the Royal Society in 1673: perhaps a short extract from this little tract, which is not common, may be acceptable.

*

"One of the provinces of Abyssinia," the writer says," is called Agoas; the inhabitants of the same name, whether these bestowed their name or took it from the province. The higher part of the country is mountainous and woody, yet not without vallies and groves of cedars, for goodness and scent not inferior to those of Lebanus. In this territory is the known head and source of the Nile, by the natives called Abani, the father of waters, from the great collection it makes in the king

doms