diers of the British Auxiliary Legion in Spain; and in the extremes of climate in the Northern and Southern States of America."

In 1845, I became connected with a London Journal possessing the largest circulation ever attained by the weekly press, with one exception; to that publication I contributed every week, for a period of three years, an article on Popular Medicine, and conducted the column "Answers to Correspondents."

This opened to me an extensive field of observation, and I was pained to find so much self-caused misery existing amongst our fellow-creatures, and so much ignorance and extortion practised by the vampires who pollute the newspapers of the day with their disgusting advertisements.

In 1850, I projected "THE PEOPLE'S MEDICAL JOURNAL, AND FAMILY PHYSICIAN," which was thus announced :

"The purpose of this periodical is to diffuse popular knowledge on the laws of Health and Disease; to instruct how the one may be prevented, the other removed; to improve the sanitary condition, and add to the wellbeing of the industrious classes; to afford competent and legitimate advice to the invalid; to spare his purse, and lessen the un

just gains of the extorting quack and the advertising pill-vendor."

For nineteen months I edited and wrote all the original articles in the Journal, which acquired a circulation of 11,000 per week. In the autumn of 1851, I was compelled to relinquish this labour and anxiety by illhealth, which necessitated a short relaxation from study and practice. Soon after the

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commencement of the Medical Journal, I was inundated with letters seeking advice for the affliction now under consideration, but as mine was a FAMILY JOURNAL, I could not introduce such topics into its pages; I therefore published a small pamphlet entitled "The Diseases of Error," with this preface: "It is with much reluctance I publish this little book. My position, however, as Editor of the People's Medical Journal,' renders the task imperative. The world can form no conception of the thousands of sufferers who seek for such counsel as I have endeavoured to give in the following pages: the world can form no conception of the thousands who, lured by the specious advertisements of empirics who profess to make certain infirmities their special study, have been wrecked in health, peace, and purse. The daily re

ceipt of letters addressed to me in my editorial capacity, from victims to this heartless assumption and robbery, convinced me that I might do the state some service,' by giving a plain exposition of those diseases which have hitherto been a golden harvest to ignorant charlatans."

This work was stereotyped, and I am unable to say, within one or two thousand, how many copies have been printed; but I am certain I speak within the limit, when I say that at least 17,000 copies are in the hands of the public.

I have thought it necessary very briefly to state my opportunities of observing all the phases of mental and bodily disease which Spermatorrhoea is capable of inducing: my professional reputation renders it unnecessary -had I the vain desire-to descant on the success of my practice; but I must be permitted to add, that each day's experience confirms the value of the treatment detailed in the following pages.

25, LLOYD SQUARE,

LONDON.