NOT.E ON HR. GRANVILLE.
We have received a letter of complaint from a respectable cor- respondent relating to our two notices of Dr. GRANVILLE'S publi- cations—that of his Oration on the 1st and of his book on Counter- Irritation on the 29th of December.
As the observations on the Oration only relate to matters of critical opinion, it is unnecessary to enter into them : the work and the criticisms are both before the public, and every person who thinks it worth while, is free to pass his own judgment upon ours in any shape and style he pleases ; but it is obvious that there would be no end to discussion upon the opinions of various people as to the merit of various writers. The objections to the brief review of Counter-Irritation, directly or indirectly involve matters of let, and merit more attention. Their nature will be seen by a quotation from our correspondent's letter.
" 1st. Dr. Granville states in his prellice that his book is primarily and chiefly addressed to the public, and not to the profession, for reasons which he fully gives ; and had he given the formulas at length, your reviewer would no doubt have joined, and Justly too his medical brethren in deprecating such an unprofessional course, as thereby the public would have been Intrusted with it powerful and dangerous remedy without the advice and intervention of the legitimate practitioner. " 2dly. Dr. G re 'trifle has NOT kept the jinmulas for his lotions a secret from The ingression. Ever since he began to use the remedy (which he does not claim to be new, or even newly applied) and to collect evidence in its favour, he has made it known to many medwal men, and even offered at any tinie to show its effects to the sceptical. Having satisfied himself by a multiplicity of facts and cases that this old remedy might he made much ntore extensively useful than was ititherto supposed, he conveyed the information to those chieily concerned, the public, by Ins book ; and published to the profession in the best existing vehicle for medical information, viz. the Lancet, (of October 27th,) a full and particular account of all the formulas and the different 'males of preparing them."
We will reply to these categorical remarks categorically.
I. The excuse of Dr. GRANVILLE ihr addressing the book to the general reader" (that its " views would prove abortive unless the
public generally were previously made familiar with the subject ") is insufficient. The public are accustomed to follow the opinion of their medical attendants in inure important matters than the ap- plication of a strong counter-irritant. If it were otherwise, how
came the hundred patients of Dr. GRANVILLE'S selected cases to submit to an experimental treatment ? The excuse for the non- * Preface to Counter-Irritatim.
publication of the formulas, in the book is equally insufficient. If it required an octavo voltime to induce the public to submit to the application of the lotions under medical advide, it is not likely that they would use them of their own accord. 'Besides, who ever heard of the suppression of a prescription because somebody might misuse it by taking it without advice. The public are intrusted with preparations as "powerful" if not so "dangerous" as Dr. GRANVILLE'S remedy.
2. It is perhaps unnecessary to say,- that we were ignorant of Dr. GRANVILLE having, on the 27th October, published his for- mulas in the Lancet—quite unnecessary to add, that he is freed front the charge of suppressing them; or that, when a person is re- viewing a book, he cannot be expected, week by week and month by month, to read a variety of publications on the chance of finding something which ought to have been in the volume itself. To every other part of our notice we stand. We think the mode Dr. GRAN.. VILLE adopted to put forth—not, as we expressly said, a "new principle, but a new preparation," empirical in spirit if not in form; we think the same of the omissions of the formulas in the volume ; and a strong proof of its irregularity may be found in the present misconception. Moreover, as Counter-Irritation was published in July, we are at a loss to conceive why Dr. GRANVILLE delayed the publication of the formulas "till October, or what motives induced hint to publish them then.
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