Let the whole community be enlightened upon the subject of medicine, and be induced to examine and judge of it with the same reason and plain common sense that all men exercise in their ordinary affairs. When these things have been done, all the most rational and most efficient means will have been employed for the removal of quackery. But we can never expect its complete extermination. History informs us that it has always existed in some form or other, and a consideration of the human propensities leads us to conclude that it always will. An insatiable thirst for the marvellous seems to be incident to the human mind, in all states and conditions of society. Man lives in the midst of mystery;—if he looks back, or forward, or around him, he is constantly lost in wonder and amazement; and unless his mind is disciplined, cultivated, and trained to reasoning, he is poorly qualified to separate facts from appearances, and truths from falsehoods—and even then the most cultivated intellects are often found to embrace obvious delusions. But it is acknowledged on all hands that nothing but the diffusion of intelli-
