The object of Dr. Hestev's Dialogue between a Bilious Patient
and a Physician, is to enforce the doctrine, that purgative medi.
eines of any kind are not only useless but mischievous, either palliatives or cures for indigestion, bile, and similar affections. The opinions respecting the secretions of the bowels, so widely
entertained by the people, and so authoritatively enforced by ABERNETHY and his successors, Dr. HENRY ingeniously aims if proving to be absurd, and that Nature has provided means to prevent injurious constipation (of course excepting the case of active disease.) The remedy of Dr. HENRY for the class of dime ders enumerated is simple, and resolvable into temperance and exercise. Give the stomach less work to do, or strengthen the system by air and active exercise, in order to enable it to do its work; but abstain in toto from purgatives, which always weaken, and at last lose their effect. It is difficult to rise from the perusal of this clearly-written little tract, without admitting the theory of Dr. HENRY; but in applying it, he scarcely perhaps makes suffi- cient allowance for the effects of the unnatural habits of our ancestors rind ourselves; many of us, as regards diet and mull- eine, being in as artificial a state as the confirmed dram-drinker. Even granting that his system would operate as he implies, the patient would need the philosopher more than the physician; for his body can only be cured at the expense of a moral and mental contest.
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