Athothis : a satire on modern medicine / by Thomas C. Minor.

" Nonsense!" responded Athothis. " Such trivial matters as this should not weary your mind and pro- duce headache. Cheer up, my mortal friend ! " " Such remarks neither comfort me nor remedy the evil," said Paulus Androcydes, shaking his spiritual head in sadness. " For myself, I can not help but condemn the growth of the evil, and believe with Yorick, who, speaking of this species of medical murder, remarked: ' The life of our neighbor is shortened, and often taken away, as directly as if by a weapon, by the empirical sale of nostrums and patent medicines, which ignorance and avarice blend. The loud tongue of the quack im- prudently promises much, and the ears of the sick are ever open. As many of these pretenders deal in edge tools, too many, I fear, perish from their misapplication. So great are the difficulties of tracing out the hidden causes of the evils, to which this frame of ours is sub- ject, that the most candid of the profession have ever allowed and lamented how unavoidably they are in the dark, so that the best medicines, administered with the wisest heads, shall often do the mischief they are in- tended to prevent. These are misfortunes to which we are subject in this state of darkness. But when men, without skill, without education, without knowledge, either of the disease, or even of what they sell, make merchandise of the miserable, and, from a dishonest principle, trifle with the pain of the unfortunate, too often with their lives, and from the mere motive of dis- honest gain : every such instance of a person bereft of life, by the hand of ignorance, can be considered in no other light than a branch of the same root. It is murder in the true sense, which, though not cognizable by the