culminating point previous to 1835. Like all other delusions, having no foundation in truth it was destined to perish. Whenever the attention of intelligent, reflecting men was directed to it, they saw its absurdities and its dangers, and opposed it, and the great number of sudden deaths which took place under its operations alarmed the public, and often obliged the practitioner to fly from the scene of his exploits. As certain sagacious quadrupeds are said to quit a sinking ship, so Thomsonian doctors one after another abandoned their craft. Some returned to the anvil, some to the lapstone, and some to the plow; others stood their ground, and continued to practise in some way under other names. The out-door signs of Thomsonian doctors, and Thomsonian Infirmaries, disappeared in a trice, and the men who but a short time before were Thomsonians, had now become Improved Botanic Doctors, or Eclectics, or of the Reformed Practice, or Homœopathists, or Hydropathists, or Chrono-Thermalists, or something else; and by this process of transmigration many
