CURRENT LITERATURE.
Doctors and Doctors. By Graham Everitt. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.)—These "curious chapters in medical history and quackery" contain some interesting and, we may add, instructive matter. The old feuds between physician and surgeon, the more recent disputes between physicians and apothecaries, the endless eccentricities of belief in remedies, the impostures of the knowing and the delusions of the ignorant, the tricks of the medical trade, and other kindred subjects, are discussed and described in this volume. There is a picturesque chapter with the title of " The Red Cross on the Door," which contains, among other curious things, some extracts from the diary of Dr. Nathaniel Hodges. Dr. Hodges stuck to his post throughout the course of the Great Plague of London, and escaped unhurt, thanks, he thought, to the virtues of good Canary wine. " Good Canary," however, was not so useful a friend in ordinary times, for the unlucky doctor died in a debtor's prison some twenty years afterwards. One of the bearers of the dead attributed his immunity, in the first place, to tobacco. When he had not his pipe in his mouth, " he supplied its place with garlic and rue." But the learned physician had no opinion of tobacco. There are interesting chapters on mineral waters ; on "modern miracles," including the cases at Lourdes; and on American spiritualism. Under the heading of " Medicine Mania," there is the account of a strange "patent medicine" trial. Altogether, this is a readable book.
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