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UNQUALIFIED PRACTITIONERS.

To the Editor of THE LANCET.

SIR,—’ A Regular Surgeon,’ of the NorthRiding of Yorkshire, has stated to you that,in his neighbourhood, " almost every town

and vtlbge, and bamlet, has its impudentMd uneducated charlatan, who will boldlybeard the regular surgeon, and interferewith him at every turn." Within a narrowarde, in the immediate neighbouihood ofmy residence, are nine persons who exer-cise the solemn, and all but sacred functionsof the medical profession ; yet, Sir, five atleast of these nine, are men of the grossestignorance, and of the most superficial, or ofno medical education, who have not evenserved an apprenticeship to a rural apothe-cary on the cheap, and, shall 1 say, mostdisgraceful terms, of discharging the dutiesui groom and footboy, as well as appren-tice ; i speak from facts, Sir, within my ownknowledge. Such are the majority of mycompetitors, and they beat me hol1ow in therace for public. favour. A las, Sir, the sage,who the other day earned aa honest livingas a labouring mechanic, is now drinkingand bustling from house to house, and ham-let to hamlet, dispensing either health, dis-ease, or death, with the confidence of in-fallible wisdom, and prescribing ten timeswhere I prescribe once. Your corre-

spondent informs us, that the law willsilence these persons ; I know not the law ;but 1 have some faint recollection of the re-sults of prosecutions by the Apothecary’sCompany for such offences, and they werefailures.As to protecting the regular surgeon or I

regular apothecary, it is not the basis onwich the merit of this question must benor have we medical men, merely asbucl-i, a right to call on the legislature for))MtMtion. If we have been cajoled intoan expensive line of study, we must bear theloss of our folly, or our misfortune ; but letus not be so very dishonest to the risinggeneration of medical men, as to misleadt1Jem, because we have been misled; ratherlet us tell1.hem honestly, and at once, thatthey have no occasion to sacrifice their pre-cious time, health, and money, in the pain-fd and laborious pursmt of medical and sur-gical knowledge let us discard prejudice,and direct the aspirant to the bold careervf the irregular practitioner ! Why, Sir,should you and I daily augment the numberof our grey hairs for the benefit of man-kind, when our very labour, taken in theaggregate, is prejudicial to ourselves ? Jen-ner, the immortal, the honoured distributorof Mod to all mankind, except the medical

profession, from whose pockets he has

stopped the flow of millions! besides allthe other odious medical men, who are dailydevising means to preserve health and

abridge disease, ye are all faithless to your-selves and to your professional brethren!!Oh! for the days when the Doctor ac-

quired honour, as his patient, after a longand doubtful struggle, recovered in spite ofhis drugs and his blunders, days not posi-tively goneby, but they do not fall to thelot of every man, and are wonderfully andruinously abridged by the labours of thoseinconsiderate men above alluded to. Dothe lawyers act thus’! they are too pro-found. Do any class of tradesmen act thus?they are men of much more solid sense, Allother classes of society contrive to protectand augment, their individual interests ; incommerce, witness the prohibitory laws, asregard produce and manufacture ; in law,the heavy stamp duties on articled clerks,and the livglily-laudable district societies ofattorneys for the suppression of irregularpractitioners and unauthorised persons, therethey vigilantly watch ; but should a dunceI by bad grammar, or bad law, cause an ob-scurity in a will, which may require theluminaries of chancery to render legible, atthe expense of a few thousands to the un-fortunate client, this is all correct ! and thelearned sages may safely congratulate them-selves on their blunders as they count the

golden gains, protected as they are by com.

mon usage, and what not. Let us, then,unite to protect the initiated, and thrive byour ignorance ! Let us apply our talentand genius, if we have any, in gaining theconfidence of our patients. and leave the

study of pathology, &c. &c., to the philoso-pher ; depend on it, we shall gain both infortune and reputation. Am I not right?What have society done for us, that weshould thus labour for their good, and ourown injury? The quacks are the onlyrational men in the medical profession !Let ua try again. Of the great mass of so-

ciety, not more than one in a thousand iscapable of forming a tolerable estimate of therelative merits of any two persons claimingto be medical men, though the one shall bethe most ignorant and the other the mostlearned, person in the practice of medicine.Is it not then the imperative duty of theconservative body to protect this immensemajority from the most insidious, the mostfatal injuries to which they are hourly ex-posed Horrible! horrible! Sir, are the facts

that now press on my memory ; the higherclass of medical practitioners ill the coun-

try could, I am persuaded, unfold such se-crets as would astound mankind ! I say thehigher class, because they are the more fre-quently called in by the doubting sufferer ;though this is very seldom, for these irre-

604

gular practitioners, for reasons sufficientlyobvious, assume the utmost confidence, themost astonishing confidence, and strenu-

ously object to any interference ; becauseif infallibility be any where, it is with them-selves.An immense majority of society is un-

protected, and, from their want of know-ledge, cannot protect themselves ; they areat the mercy of the unprincipled quack,whose pilfering might excite a smile, if itwere not accompanied by personal injury,and frequently by death ; is it not then thebounden duty of the legislature to lookinto this matter? I allege, Sir, that themost frightful evils, and to a very astonish.ing extent, are constantly being endured bya large portion of society from unqualifiedpersons practising both medicine and sur-gery ; this is a secret and hidden evil, and canonly be dragged to Light by the profession itself;for no other body of men can detect it. Am i

I not stigmatising ourselves with disgrace-ful and a wicked supineness? and ought not Ithe government to have penetrated to these i

crying evils ; is the government justifiedin permitting such monsters to prey ontheir fellow - subjects, because no peti-tions are presented against them ? howcan the public petition against an evilwhich they do not perceive? Let a com-mittee of the House of Commons be ap-pointed to inquire into the practices of allirregular medical men, more particularly in

the country; and I am quite convinced theresult would be, efficient laws to protect theunwary from the worst of all possiblecheats, and to put them down, howeverlong they may have existed. It was not mydesign, when I took up my pen, to write along letter ; but the subject urged me on, and,it would be very inconvenient for me to copyand correct ; should you, Sir, with all itsfaults, give it a place in your excellentJournal, of course 1 shall be ,proud of it;should you reject it, I at least have the

pleasure of assuring you that I am yourconstant reader and hearty

, Good-wisher,. ‘ MEDICUS.’

Hundred of High Peak,Derby, July 24th, 1828.

PHRENOLOGY.

To the Editor I1fTuE LANCET.

SIR,—I have perused with some attentionthe wild hallucinations of" 11 DerFrieseliitz,"in your 253d Number, p. 433, ; whetherhis production be intended as a specimen ofhis logical deductions, his accuracy of ex-

pression, or his total ignorance of the sub-ject on which he has written, it must beallowed by every impartial miud, that bisanathema against the science of prenology,arises either from his ignorance, his obso-nacy, or his malice, or from what is sallmore probable, the union of the whole, whichI shall now demonstrate. As reg-ald8 his ig-norance, let us revert to the latter part ofthe iirst sentence in his letter; he says,"and the stubbornness with which tmtLre.sists fiction is pretty strongly exemplifiedla the examination of the female skuL hvDr. Epps;" surely this sagacious authormeant to reverse his sentence, aud sav, thestubbornness with which "fiction resiststruth," at least according to his own de6i,i-tion.

In the next sentence, in alluding, as Ipresume he does, to the examination, 1eobserves, " It is one of the most completedeath- blows this monstrous tom-foolery has

received ;" if his opinion be allowed io de.termine the point at issue, it may be so,but certainly he discovers great obstinacy 01character, if he refuses assent to what wasoffered by Dr. Epps in allusion to this verycase reported in THE LANCET. Fortunatelyfor the science, this case, which has beenso frequently alluded to, fell under the no.tice of Mr. De Ville; he being an overseerof the parish where the facts took place, hehas a caat of the female’s head, and wiilafford every information, if applied to forthat nnrnose.

In the third sentence, " Der Frieschutz"

supposes a probability, whilst phrenologyestablishes a fact. Many phrenologists arein the constant practice of meeting eachother, and are or can make themselves wellacquainted with each other’s organisation,yet they enjoy each other’s society withoutthe least distrust, evil tendency, or shyness,to which this writer alludes ; and it would bewell for him if he availed himself of the sameadvantages, he would then, perhaps, be ableto check the free indulgence of a very pro.bable organ in his own head, self-esteem,and call into actiou a little more benevo.lence. I graut, to use his own expression,his self-esteem may be so friendly to him,as to enable him to remain blind to his ownweakness, until removed by calling uponanother conspicuous organ to assist lUll,viz. love of approbation, which it is morethan probable he possesses, and makes greatuse of; and, lastly, instead of crying downthe unassuming pretensions of a truly supe-rior mind, (D. Spurzherm’s,) he would bemoreusefull employed in attempting to dis-cover and correct the morbid derelopmeiitc.fhis own, and then, instead of emphaticallyexclaiming in the languabe of an ignorantpretender, as in his last sentence, he wouldinstinctively be convinced, and more justly