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234 qualified, there would be no occasion for employing a physician. Is it not extremely preposterous, therefore, for the physician to ask his patient by what means he will be treated? Or, is there no material difference between rational medicine and every kind of quackery? Are they all alike good or bad? Must we come at last to the mortifying conclusion that all the labors, researches and observations of physicians, for two thousand years, have brought forth nothing of any more value than the vilest nostrum? Can the physician be honest who tells his patient that all ways, or any two opposite ways, are alike good? When the house is on fire, is it equally good to cast water or turpentine on the flames? When the patient is suffering from obstinate constipation, is it equally good to give aperients or astringents? Men who pretend to such principles as these are either profoundly ignorant themselves, or design to deceive others; and in either case they must be dangerous practitioners.

Some of these men may effect their purpose by a double imposition; and whilst they pretend to remove alvine obstructions by astringents, they