is your good Mr. -"One good lady whom I took the liberty of expostulating with for not shewing me quite so much respect as I thought due to her husband's old friend, had the candour to confess to me that she had often heard Mr. speak of me before marriage, and that she had conceived a great desire to be acquainted with me, but that the sight of me had very much disappointed her expectations; for from her husband's representations of me, she had formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer-like looking man (I use her very words); the very reverse of which proved to be the truth. This was candid; and I had the civility not to ask her in return, how she came to pitch upon a standard of personal accomplishments for her husband's friends which differed so much from his own: for my friend's dimensions as near as possible approximated to mine ; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I have the advantage of him by about half an inch; and he no more than myself exhibiting any indications of a martial character in his air or countenance.

These are some of the mortifications which I have encountered in the absurd attempt to visit at their houses. To enumerate them all would be a vain endeavour: I shall therefore just glance at the very common impropriety which married ladies are guilty of,-of treating us as if we were their husbands, and vice versa. I mean, when they use us with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. did not come home, till the oysters which she had had opened out of compliment to me were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his absence. This was reversing the point of good manners: for ceremony is an invention to take off the un easy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacca kept the oysters back for me, and withstood her husband's importunities to go to supper, she would have acted according to the strict rules of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, beyond the point of a modest behaviour and decorum: therefore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, who at her own table sent away a dish of Morellas,* which I was applying to with great good will, to her husband at the other end of the table, and recommended a plate of less extraordinary

* I don't know how to spell this word; I mean Morella cherries.

extraordinary gooseberries to my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of

But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaintance by Roman denominations. Let them amend and change their manners, or I promise to send you the full-length English of their names, to be recorded to the terror of all such desperate offenders in future. Your humble servant,

P. S. I hope you are not a married man.

INNUPTUS.

ART. XIV. On the Origin, Progress, Corruptions, and gradual Improvement of Medical Science.

IT has cost learned men much time and labour to find out the founders of the different Arts; just as if each of them had been invented, all at once, at some particular period, by the happy genius of some heaven-favoured and predestinated individual, instead of being the offspring of necessity, rude, ignorant, and lefthanded at the outset, but in a number of years (often not for a number of ages) becoming more perfect, more useful, and more refined. They ought to have considered, that some useful arts must be nearly coeval with man; for food, cloathing, and habitation, even in their original simplicity, require some art; that many other arts are of such antiquity, as to place the inventors beyond the reach of tradition; and that several have gradually crept into existence, without an inventor. "The busy mind, however," says Lord Kames,* "accustomed to a beginning in things, cannot rest till it find or imagine a beginning to every art." And, indeed, it may be truly affirmed, however strange and paradoxical the expression may seem to some, that art is natural to man; for he has been found, at all times, practising some art or another, to procure pleasure or to avert pain.—If, after having taken the notice which they merited of those lucky individuals, who in early times, by some happy, though for the most part accidental exertion of genius, had contributed so much to the progress of the Sciences and Arts, as to get their names enrolled amongst the gods of their country, the researches of authors had been directed, not to the unprofitable, because unattainable object of finding out their imaginary founders, or inventors, as well as the age and country that gave existence to

In his Sketches of the History of Man-Sketch on the Arts.

each

each of them, but to the investigation of their natural progress,→→→→ of the causes that forwarded them at particular periods and in particular situations, and of those that retarded them in others, they certainly would be more creditable to themselves, and more useful to mankind; because, from the result of such inquiries we should probably be enabled to point out what times and circumstances are favourable and unfavourable to their progress, and, accordingly, to shew what are the most likely means of promoting their future improvement.

The origin of Medicine, like that of most of the arts, is no where to be found, but hides its head in obscurity and fable; and although much has been written, even lately, concerning its rise and progress, it is probably of little use to spend much time in attempting to develope its origin, or to seek for it, with sanguine hopes, in any particular age or country. This, at least, seems to have been the opinion of Celsus,-to medical scholars a venerable name. Nothing can be more certain, than that medicine existed before there were any regular surgeons or physicians.+ This fact is attested by all antiquity. Pliny informs us, if there have been people who had no physicians, that they were not, for all that, without medicine: and, indeed, it could not be well otherwise; as it must have been nearly coeval with man, like every other art necessary to remove the wants and remedy the imperfections of human nature: and accordingly, a long time before it could be reduced to any thing like the systematic regularity and form of a science, it must have been practised, in one rude shape or another, amongst all nations, however barbarous or uncivilized. But although the works of the ancients, particuJarly those of the Greeks, afford us some very early notices concerning medicine, we find it a very difficult matter to ascertain In what country it first received the regular form of a science, or was practised as a separate professional art; for its supposed rise among the Egyptians, which was always involved in fabulous obscurity, has been recently made more doubtful than it was before; nor can we say that their labours have been crowned with success, though men of undoubted eminence have exerted themselves of late to illumine and reduce to order the chaos in which its origin is involved, and made great efforts to trace its early footsteps among the Assyrians, Iranians or Babylonians, or even among the ancient inhabitants of India, from whom they endeavour to derive the arts and sciences of Greece, together with all the wisdom and knowledge of the Egyptians. This, however, is not the case, if we take the word of the most modern historian of medicine, who tells us," That much new light has been lately

De Medicina, lib. i. in initio. ... See Cabanis, &c. ch, ii. sect. l.

lately thrown on the primitive physic of mankind, by the late extraordinary advances in Sanscrit literature; from which source," he says, "it is learned, beyond the possibility of doubt, that long previous to its cultivation in Europe very considerable progress had been reached by the science of healing in Hindustan; and that a remarkable coincidence is to be observed between its precepts as inculcated by the Brahmans, and as promulgated of old by the respective hierarchies of Iran (the old Assyrian empire of the Greeks) and Egypt, more especially the latter; and that, by the efforts of these learned bodies, a nearly regular system of Physic had been erected, át a very remote æra, in the East.”*— There seems to be, I must confess, nearly sufficient evidence for the opinion, that the Arts and Sciences have originally proceeded from the East: but, notwithstanding the labours of the good and very learned Sir William Jones, and of his associates in the East, it is still very difficult to ascertain, whether the Egyptians, the Iranians (that is, the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians of the Greeks), or the Hindus, were the parent source. The investigation of this topic, even so far as the origin of medi cine is concerned, would lead me into a more extensive excursion into Asiatic literature than I am disposed to enter upon in the outset of these medical inquiries; but in a future communication I intend to examine the facts and the evidence lately brought to light on this subject by the exertions and researches of our countrymen in the East: observing simply here, that the records of those very early ages are not to be credited without the most minute and rigorous inquiries, and that the most authentic early accounts we have of the infancy of Medicine are those of the Greeks: But although the early annals of all nations are for the most part fabulous, one fact may, however, be certainly deduced from them with respect to medicine; namely, that the practice of Physic amongst almost all rude tribes has been either exclusively confined to the Priests, as forming a part of religion and magic; or has been conjointly exercised by them and the old women, who in the early stages of rude societies are generally supposed to possess a degree of knowledge, particularly in magical science, almost beyond the reach of humanity. "Et profecto," says Dr. Gregory, in his valuable and elegant work," apud omnes, quotquot hactenus cogniti fuerint, recentes populos, Sacerdotes vel soli medendi munus occuparunt, tanquam religionis et magices partem, vel divisum cum mulieribus officium medicum habuerunt, quibus, præsertim vetulis, peritia aliqua in arte magicâ, et ideo notitia quædam plus quam humana, imputari solebant." And indeed AA 2 among

* See Disquisitions in the History of Medicine, by Dr. Millar, of Glasgow. + Conspect. Med. Theoret. Vol. I. 31.

among the uncivilized tribes, not only of early but even of mo. dern times, magicians, women,* and priests, have been found to be the only physicians. Another fact also, which may demand more of our attention in the progress of our inquiries, is, that savage tribes, at least those of America, have been found to have made a greater progress in medicine than in any other art. †. Abandoning, however, for the present the field of doubt and conjecture, I shall, in the remainder of this essay, confine my attention to such facts only concerning the early history of Medicine as are derived from the most authentic ancient sources.

Whatever opinion we may be disposed to entertain of that medico-antiquarian zeal, which would make medicine, as a science, almost as old as the creation, we must be satisfied to deduce its authentic history from a much later æra. To investigate the sources from which the Greeks derived their learning, and that knowledge of the Arts and Sciences which they have transmitted to us, through works of so many different kinds, is not so easy as some may be disposed to imagine. The wonders related in the annals of Philosophy concerning the wisdom of the Egyptian priests, the Chaldeans, or Assyrians, the Brahmans and other ancient sages, and the journies undertaken by many even of the most eminent of the Grecian philosophers into Egypt and the East, make it probable that from those sources were derived many valuable parts of their learning, as well as many useful prin ciples of science; but as no genuine fragment of any Egyptian, Chaldean, or Phoenician author, has come down to our times, it is likewise probable, that in those nations literature and science never attained the same perfection as in Greece.‡ So that even allowing them to have been much indebted to the wisdom and science of the East, as we must undoubtedly do when we consider the refined and improved state to which they carried most of the Arts and Sciences, we must still confess that more is to be attributed to the active disposition and undoubted genius § of that illustrious and (as Livy called them) most learned people. ||Among the Greeks are to be found the most authentic early records of medical science; and theirs undoubtedly is the praise of having reduced it to a degree of systematic accuracy and perfection, which it certainly had not previously attained. 66 Si qua ars est, (says Targa, the learned editor of Celsus), quam singuJari studio ac diligentia Græci excoluerint, ea certe medicina est, quæ, in Oriente summo semper in honore habita, ex Ægypto, ut

cæteræ

* See the Monthly Magazine, Vol. XXX. p. 219. + See Cabanis on the Revolutions of Medical Science, ch. ii. sect. 1. and Millar's Disquisitions in the History of Medicine, pp. 7, 8, 9, &c.; and ibid. pp. 24, 5, 6, 7, 8. Denina's Revolutions of Literature." See Livy, b. xxxix. ch. 8.

See Stuart's Antiquities of Athens.