MEDICINE NO MYSTERY.* •
LITERARY SPECTATOR.
r " Pr has long," says Dr. MORRISON of Dublin, the author of the little book with this title, " been a subject of complaint amongst scientific
and well-educated medical men, that the public in general seems either
unable or unwilling to draw the distinction between the physician of liberal attainments, who founds the practice of his profession on en- ' lightened views of the structure and functions of the animal economy in health and disease, which his previous education and habits of phi-
losophic research have enabled him to take with justice and precision, —and the uneducated and illiberal retailer of drugs and nostrums, who 1 practises physic in the same spirit that he pursues his mechanic trade 'me only ideas of the profession he presumes to follow are derived from hearsay and precedent ; who, incapable of reading in the Book of Nature, as he has not cultivated the moral sense necessary to the perception of its character, is only confirmed in his errors by the prac- tice of them ; who mistakes symptoms for causes ; and in whose short- sighted views the idea of an ailment and a nostrum are so inseparably united, that the one uniformly follows the other in his bungling and self-interested practice. It is a notorious and melancholy fact, that
five-sixths of the practice of the medical art are engrossed by persons of the latter description; and the-result is a frightful increase of human misery in the form of chronic diseases, without even the pitiful counterpoise of a pecuniary saving being, effected by the system of employing those roturiers of the profession:* -seThe science of medicine has. a still greater enemy than even the roluriers of the profession : it is they who talk nonsense about it—
nonsense, it is true, disguised in fine words, but nevertheless nonsense, which dazzles and deludes the ignorant—disgusts and repulses the man of sense and intelligence. The public is neither "unable nor unwilling to draw the distinction between the physician of liberal attainments" and "the uneducated and illiberal retailer of drugs and nostrums." The public perfectly
feels the distinction. The liberal physician requires a guinea for every hasty visit, without which his patient may die as soon as he pleases,— for without the fee how is he to keep up the dignity of the profession, the grand house, the liveried servants, and the well-appointed equipage ? OR the other hand, the illiberal druggist charges nothing for the advice, such as it is ; he demands a small payment for his medicine, which the patient would otherwise have :had to procure in addition to the phy- sician's fee,—for after all the guinea paid, the educated and enlightened M.D. sends the invalid to "the uneducated and illiberal retailer of I drugs and nostrums" for the means of cure. We certainly would not reconimen-it the-pi----;-a-eMe, even TO The poor, Of applying to the druggist for advice, which he is not competent generally speaking to give ; and yet we are inclined to believe, that a familiarity with the preparation of drugs and the mixture of medicines, together with the experience and practice necessarily picked up by one always in the way of disease from a boy, is as likely to suggest the appropriate remedies as a consi- derable stock of Latin, Greek, and mathematics,—which we presume is what Dr. MORRISON means by " cultivating the moral sense neces- sary to the perception of the character of the:Book of Nature," if he means any thing by such trash. The grand difference, generally speaking, between a liberal and illiberal member of a profession, is that the former has been at the University, while the latter has solely been karning the foundation and practice of his business. This is the dif- ference between an attorney and a barrister, an apothecary and a physician ; and all the world knows attornies and apothecaries are illiberal, whilst the barrister and the physician have at some college or other read Greek and Latin, rode hard, drunk hard, and in short "cultivated the moral sense necessary to the perception of the cha- racter of the Book of Nature," and thereby become worthy members of a liberal profession.
The evils of the medical profession lie deeper than Dr. McausisoN chooses to go : if Medicine is "No Mystery," as he puts forth, why does the practice of it require three ranks of professors ? why must a patient first apply to an apothecary, and then be handed over to a physician, whose prescription requires the aid of the "retailer of drugs and nostrums ? " The "pursuer of the mechanic trade" is, after all, the honestest person of the party—at least he has fewer temptations to defraud. The apothecary inundates his patients with medicines,—for he is only paid for his education, his time, his establishment, by means of the quantity of draughts, powders, embrocations, blisters, leeches, pills, lotions, alteratives, and emollients, that he can force into the stomach, or at least into the house of the sick person. The phy- sician is paid high, and he habitually lives in splendid poverty : a patient i.s therefore a catch, and human nature is belied if, now and then, in similar cases, a worthy M.D. will not trifle and daily with a not dangerous malady, or will not contrive to prolong the agreeable hours of convalescence by alarming his patient with fears of a relapse iv the doubts of the disease not being utterly eradicated from the system. The truth is, physic, like law, is too dear : medical advice is an im- portant branch of the state service, and ought to be organized in a somewhat more rational and useful manner than it is at present. First of all, there should be but one class of privileged advisers ; and no one ought to advise in cases of malady who is not as competent as he can be made. To apply to an inferior practiser of medicine in the early and docile stages of disease, and then to call in an abler ad- viser when the malady is-confirmed and unmanageable, is a solecism and absurdity only tolerated where life itself is at stake. The competency of these persons should be tried by a board appointed for the purpose ;
Medicine No Mystery; being a brief Outline of the Principles of Medical Science, aechoed as an Introduction to their general study as a branch of a liberal education. Bs John hIorrison, M.D. and A.B. Trin Coll. Dublin. London, 182D. Hurst and Chance. not a board of green cloth, but an hospital board, the members of which should take the examinee from case to case, and keep him from week to week—perhaps the space of a month might be fixed as the limit—before they should give him his certificate; which certificate should be signed by those examiners under whose eye the student has been more particularly placed, who would thus be made in part respon- sible for the competency of the practiser. The appointment and salaries of these examiners, as well as the establishment of the hospitals under their care, would be a national affair, and of the very first im- portance. This month of trial should be without expense to the pupil ; the examiners must be paid, and that handsomely, in another way. Boards of this kind ought to be established in the several capitals of the kingdom, where would also be established all the various schools of anatomy and medicine. The fee to bc taken by physicians thus authorized to practise, all over the kingdom, should be fixed at five shillings, with an allowance for distance ; the amount to be made recoverable by law. The making up of medicines, and the great branch of the art of curing, should also be included in this reorganization of the profession. The same drugs in name vary in every shop ; the same prescription differs in force in every town,—to say nothing of the risk of mistakes on the part of ignorant apprentice boys. We would take the branch of making up the ordonnances of the national physician entirely out of the hands of the trader: of necessity all his prescriptions should be made up at a particular establishment, for the model of which we would take our ancient establishment of Apothecary's Hall, excepting always the dearness of its prices. If these measures were established, we should soon see whether the public could or could not distinguish between the enlightened physi- cian and the ignorant tradesman. The patient would know that for five shillings he could get the best advice in England, and that he would have his medicine made up at a cheap rate without a chance of buying oxalic acid for Epsom salts. It is possible that the physician, under this establishment, would not be the great man he is now ; but neither would there exist that unhappy genus, neither one thing nor the other, the ignorant apothecary,—who gives advice every hour of his life, but dares not charge for it—who has not the courage to commence any efficient course of treatment, for there is a greater than he who lie expects every day will be called in to push him from his stool ; and moreover, that worthy character the educated and in- telligent apothecary, who yields to no physician either in ability or ex- perience, will not be kept from the assertion of his true importance— he will be saved from the degrading position of a physician's lackey. Such are the hasty outlines of a plan which might easily be pre sented in a more finished form, and which we think pregnant with advantage to our countrymen, who have been too lone- bamboozled by dog Latin and hard names. This is our idea of Medicine being No Mystery.
Dr. MORRISON does not venture upon this subject, further than the tirade we have quoted against the retailer of nostrums. His little book is partly physiological and partly nosological : he expounds the different functions of the frame, and describes the different diseased actions that may be established—not, however, in such a manner as to call for any particular notice. The work, however, will at least inform the world that Dr. MoastasoN resides at No. 1S, Upper Gloucester-street, Dublin.
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