society, to make a very liberal use of the freedom of opinion in these matters, and the judgment of some sage matron is often boldly put in opposition to that of a host of men of learning and experience, and some very incompetent individual often takes it upon himself to give a flat denial to the highest medical authority. If we enter the workshop of the rudest mechanic, he gives us to understand that that is his peculiar province; he prides himself upon the possession of the knowledge and skill which belong exclusively to his kind of business, and he tacitly asks to be respected in his own vocation. All this is right. But when he enters our province, and sets up his brief and illusory experience in opposition to all medical knowledge and all true experience, neither he nor his experience deserve to be respected. If the nobility of England had left medicine where it belonged, in the hands of the legitimate profession, and confined their attention to their own proper duties, instead of undertaking to reform the medical world by means of Perkins's metallic points, they would not have become the silly dupes of that shallow delusion.
