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284 it happens that the proportion of recoveries is more numerous. The principal practical element has been more or less recognized and employed by the greatest physicians of every school through the whole history of medical practice, as well as by quacks and superstitious pagan priests. "The History of Medical Economy during the Middle Ages," by George F. Fort, contains numerous illustrations of this subject, though adduced for another purpose, and, unlike many other treatises, giving the authorities with most painstaking accuracy.

Dr. Rush, of whom Dr. Tuke affirms that few physicians have had more practical experience of disease, says:

I have frequently prescribed remedies of doubtful efficacy in the critical stage of acute diseases, but never till I had worked up my patients into a confidence bordering upon certainty of their probable good effects. The success of this measure has much oftener answered than disappointed my expectations. The "British and Foreign Medical Review" for January, 1846, whose editor then was Sir John Forbes, contained an article written by himself which encourages "the administration of simple, feeble, and altogether powerless, non-perturbing medicines, in all cases in which drugs are prescribed pro forma, for the satisfaction of the patient's mind, and not with the view of producing any direct remedial effect." "Physic and Physicians," published in 1839, speaking of the celebrated and extraordinarily successful Dr. Radcliffe, who was the founder of the Radcliffe Library at Oxford University, and died in 1714, says that he paid particular attention to the mind of the patient under his care, and had been heard to say that he attributed much of his success and eminence