upon us at different times. Nowhere is the imagination displaced to a greater extent; and perhaps so ample an exhibition of human invention might gratify our vanity, if it were not more than compensated by the humiliating view of so much absurdity, contradiction, and falsehood. To harmonize the contrarieties of medical doctrines is indeed a task as impracticable as to arrange the fleeting vapors around us, or to reconcile the fixed and repulsive antipathies of nature. Dark and perplexed, our devious career resembles the groping of Homer's Cyclops around his cave.
Sir John Forbes, M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London, says:
No systematic or theoretical classification of diseases or of therapeutic agents, ever yet promulgated, is true, or anything like the truth, and none can be adopted as a safe guidance in practice.
