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242 public. In Old England, the and the  are among the most eminent; in New England, the  are the most celebrated. It is believed that there are, at the present time, about a dozen of that name who claim to possess the skill which they have inherited from a common ancestor, who lived about one hundred years ago in the town of South Kingston, in the State of Rhode Island. The ancestor of this race of Bone-setters was an illiterate man and had no knowledge of medicine or surgery, and his children and grandchildren have ever continued in the same state of plebeian ignorance. Yet notwithstanding this, the public pertinaciously sustain them in their pretensions to an innate family endowment. That some of these men have sometimes, by accident, reduced dislocations, I am not disposed to doubt; but having no knowledge of anatomy, they can have no surgical skill, and their success can have been no greater than might be acquired by any resolute and reckless individuals.

The public cannot be made to understand that bone-setting is purely a mechanical operation,