56 "ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN TO DO HIS DUTY.

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""Tis

Hastings looks sharply after the guineas." true," said another, "Dr. Hastings is said to be fond of money ;" and a third observed, Dr. Hastings "Will never forgive or forget the loss of a guinea." And thus you are bruited about by those who know you know every nook and corner of your character. It takes, however, neither much time nor much power of vision to peer through the flimsy veil which you throw over your paltry and pitiful inducements to paltry and pitiful attacks. Duty to the public!!" Pshaw! man, do give us some reason more consonant with probability. Do it for your own sake, if not for mine.

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But as the warlike rage waxes stronger in your breast, (I had almost written, pocket,) you exclaim,

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England expects every man to do his duty." What! have you the impudence to call upon "rich and credulous England" to arm and fight for your craving pocket? Have you the audacity to issue a battle-word to " simple John Bull," to stand up in defence of your sordid interests and humbled self-conceit? Perhaps you imagine (for what do you not imagine?) that the holiday terms you apply to the nobility and gentry who have come under my care during the last few months" the stupid, gullible, incorrigible dupes

THE STANDARD OF MERCURY AND CHALK. 57

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and monomaniacs,"-may induce them to respond to your cry and flock to your standard? So astounding is your insolence, and so overwhelming your vanity, that even such an expectation as this is not beyond your compass. England expects every man to do his duty!!" Why what Pistol-like fustian is this to proceed from a mere drug-doctor! "Tis the true anti-climax-Nelson at Trafalgar about to defend his glorious country's honour-and a Dr. Hastings at Worcester striving to defend his dirty gains and rally his countrymen round the standard of hyd. c. cretá, or mercury and chalk, and sesqui-carbonate of soda!

So ludicrous does the thing appear, that I am inclined, out of pity, to suppose you wrote it in that strange bewilderment of mind which, if not insanity, is close upon it; that state wherein people are apt to utter things that are

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apropos to nothing" as your war-cry assuredly is. In fact, my supposition is not far from the truth: you have the delirium of the yellow fever (fee-ver?) on you. Or, as you are ready at classifying "monomaniacs," I should say you were in a state of "monomania acquisitiva."

As your motives are low and unworthy, so are the appeals you make vile and indecent. By a straining

58 MEATS, &c. IN SMALL OR LARGER QUANTITY.

of a painful kind from premises of a false kind, you pronounce me to be a "chartist," and to be guilty of" impiety," appealing thus to the political and religious prejudices of those who read your trash. As regards the "political" part of the trick, I shall content myself by saying that if you know what my political opinions are, you know more than I myself do. The study of my profession has been always sufficient to occupy my mind: neither have I been dishonest enough to trade in politics, as you do in your present appeal.

But as regards the attempt to fix the stigma of "impiety" on me from a passage in my work on the Water-cure, words will not express my scorn of the man who, having your sordid motives, can draw such a forced, dishonest, and ignorant conclusion from such a passage. By the substance of that passage I abide; and I repeat, that by irritating the stomach of an individual, I could drive him to madness, and to the act of suicide: but here is the passage at length.

"Give me any full-grown individual, and let me act on his system and his brain, through his stomach, with meats and drinks in small or larger quantity at my disposal, and I will make him grave or gay, cheerful

MELANCHOLY DESPAIR AND SUICIDE.

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or melancholy; reduce him to the depths of despair, or elevate him to a fancied heaven. I will destroy his memory, or make him imagine himself the most miserable man on earth-the most to be pitied-having in his possession everything to make him satisfied. I will make him run or walk, lie in bed without the power of movement-to blaspheme or pray, and, although the best of persons, LAY VIOLENT HANDS ON HIS OWN LIFE. Of these states there is every shade of intenseness, which people produce themselves, without my being called upon to experimentalize: such is the human constitution, and such are the facts which medical men see frequently illustrated.

"It is evident that the human mind, in its present earthly state of existence, is so closely connected with the body, that whatever affects the one must also affect the other; thus we shall find mental anguish produce bodily suffering, and vice versa. Ignorant persons, who take a superficial view of things, may look upon this as the doctrine of materialism; but this is a most absurd mistake. The body acts upon the mind, and the mind upon the body, and religion accords with, and indeed teaches this fact."

For the possibility of such a process, I refer you to any of the modern writings on insanity, as well as to the long-recognized physiological connexion between the stomach and the brain, the physical organ of the spiritual mind. The veriest tyro in the science of life could enlighten you on the

subject-a subject the ignorance of which unfits you for the practice of the medical art with anything like precision or success. Your ignorance, affected or real, on this point stamps you either as falling wofully short in professional acquirement or in common integrity.

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Nay more; there is no greater “ impiety" than the application of religious subjects to the furtherance of worldly projects. I never dared to bring the awful and mysterious soul of man into the question. 'Tis you who have ventured to employ so serious a subject towards the accomplishment of a purely worldly and unchristian aim, namely, the defamation of your fellow-man, and the exaltation of your own pecuniary interests. Of the genuine religious feeling of the man who can, even in the most indirect and least palpable way, drag a matter of eternal importance into a dispute of temporary value, every right-thinking person will have the strongest doubt. In this predicament you are, learned doctor and I leave you to get out of it as you best can.

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A pretty person, truly, you are to preach on immorality!" Call you it moral to search out every weapon, fair or foul, to unprovokedly as