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122 Curative Treatment of Caries.
and impudent empirics, the Craweours,* last year, in this city
with their "Royal Mineral Succedanium for plugging carious

* These swindling villains are said to have made a handsome fortune,
in the short space of a few months, without conferring the least benefit on
their dupes. They took good care to fill their coffers out of the purses
of the good citizens of New York, (many of whom, by the by, are very
fond of patronizing./brei°-»i, instead cf native merit,) till compelled to
flee the country, when they "returned to good old England to enjoy the
yankee spoil."
We are acquainted with a respectable physician who actually allowed
these fellows to remove gold plugging from his teeth, that they might be
filled with the "Royal Mineral Succedanium."
" Credulity is a far greater source of error than superstition ; for tie
latter must always be more limited in i:s influence, and can exist only,
to any considerable extent, in the most ignorant portions oft
whereas the former diffuses itself through the minds of all classes, i y
which the rank and dignity of science is degraded, its valuable la! orfl
confounded with the vain pretentions of empiricism, and ignorance is en-
abled to claim for itself the prescriptive light of delivering oraclefl,
amidst all the triumphs of truth, and the progress of philoEO) by."
"It is the love of simplicity, the marvelous and the fatal credulity cf
mankind, that have ever patronized empiricism; hence the effects cf
charms, incantations and amulets in tie cure of diseases. A certain
physician cured his patients, by administering to their immagination, a
powerful and efficacious medicine, which, if they did not exactly follow
his directions, would certainly kill tin in, but if they did, as certainly
cure. 'This wonderful penacea was a bread pill. Pulverized rats skulls,
were once celebrated in the cure of dyspepsia; vipers tails, baked
toads, and the ossa trique'ra, in the cure of epilepsy."
" Mystery is the very soul of empiric sip ; withdraw the veil and tl e
confi deoce 'of the patient instantly languishes; thus Pliny, 'minus
credunt quae ad suam salutem pertinent, si intelligunt.' ' Patients have
less faith in the effWey of medicines administered to them, if ihey knew
what they are."— Paris' Pharmacologia.
While on the subject of empiricism, the reader will excuse a few ob-
servations, on what is termed bv some, "the new practice of medicine,"
called Homcsona'hia. The following are the principles, on which ho-
meopathic medicine is founded.
" 1st. All simple drugs given to individuals in health produce in them,
under all circumstance"?, certain definite morbid symptoms, which are
termed drug-svmptoms, and which are similar to the symptoms observa-
ble in certain corresponding natural diseases.
"2nd. The direct curative power of each simple drug, and of all medi-
cines generally consis's exactly and exclusively in the similarity of the
symptoms of a natural disease to their corresponding drug-symptoms,
or to those produced in healthy individuals, by administering certain
simple drugs to them ; so 'hat all other op-rations of drugs are to be
considered as capable only of admitting recovery indirectly, or by
chance. »
"3d. All natural substances, hut especially all drugs, acquire by cer-
tain mechanical processes, certain medicinal power, so that rny quantity