THE GREAT MODERN DISCOVERY.

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stamp it as such. I would further recommend you not to cherish the hope that you can ride rough-shod over me, or that I shall quail under your frown or sink before your pride and presumption, your power of distorting facts and fabricating misrepresentations. I was led to believe that you were something of a lion: but I find that you have not the generosity of one, and only the hide; “doff it,"

"And hang a calf-skin on thy recreant limbs." The next time you feel bilious and inclined to be pugnacious, you will find me ready, with this pen in hand, to do battle for the great modern discovery, the potent, efficacious, simple, yet philosophical WATER-CURE.

Until then "to dinner with what appetite you may.”

Great Malvern,

November 1st, 1842.

JAMES WILSON.

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LETTER II.

LEARNED DOCTOR,

THE ink in my pen was scarcely dry, ere the bilious fit mentioned in the latter paragraph of my letter seems to have invaded you with augmented intensity.

Having said that I would stand to the defence of the Water-cure and of myself, I will not shrink from my promise, although several considerations have been urged on me to induce me to leave you to the silent contempt which is, perhaps, the best answer to your undignified course of proceeding.

From all quarters, from those who are of your acquaintance, from those who are your patients, from those who wish you well, I hear of but one expressed opinion regarding the unwarrantable,

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A TRICKSTER.

unprovoked, and systematic mode of attack you have thought fit to make on me. Some remark, "Dr. Hastings has made a sad mistake;" others, that he has taken a false step." And all recommend that I should leave you to the certain reward of such combined malice and folly. But I have said you should be answered; and you shall. You shall not be allowed to scatter your venomous aspersions and slanderous misrepresentations without an antidote to the one, and an exposure of the other. I will show I will show you for what you are a trickster, and a sordid trafficker in other men's reputations.

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A friend of mine, conversing the other day in London with the most brilliant luminary of British medical literature, a fellow of the College of Physicians, and a man of your own age, chanced to mention that "Dr. Hastings was busy attacking Dr. Wilson." Pooh," answered the literary giant; "Wilson need not mind Hastings-he is a poor creature." So that I have here again good authority for leaving you to the undisturbed enjoyment of your exquisitely benevolent feelings, and highly christian train of thought. Still, as you cantingly dwell on your " duty to the public," I also am impelled by the sense of a like duty

"DUTY TO THE PUBLIC."

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to disabuse them. To me they have been a liberal, confiding public, and I should ill repay their liberality and confidence by suffering even such an one as you to depreciate the means by which so many of them have been benefited in health, or to vilify myself who employed those

means.

Your last effusion is a consolation to me, inasmuch as it confirms me in my impressions regarding the motives which actuated the former one. Disappointed vanity and baffled cupidity reign in every line of it, though I believe the latter to be stronger than the former. Conjointly, however, they appear to have produced that species of rage which is usually met with in minds that are essentially vulgar, and capable only of the two motives just mentioned.

It certainly is enough to disgust the coarsest stomach to hear you spouting about " duty to the public,”—you who are notorious for your strict attention to the financial part of your intercourse with that unlucky portion of the "public" who fall under your professional care! More than one member of that portion have given me their evidence to this "amiable weakness" on your part. "Ha!" said one of your patients,