Excerpt from The Dissector, 1845, Vol. 2

What from this barren beingido we Our senses narrow, and our reason frma' Lifei short, and truth a gem' that lovesotfl'e se And alpl, things weighed 'ih Custom's falsest scale. W 33 Opinion an omnipotence-whose veil t n Mantles the earth with darkness - until right' And wrong are accidents - and men grow a e L685 their own judgments should rid t And thbeir'free thoughts be crimes and earth have too much light. The operation of blood-letting is so associ ated in the minds of most men, with the practice of physio, that when a very' sensible German physician, some time ago, petitioned the King of Prussia to make the employment of the lancet penal; he was laughed: at from one end of Europe to the other. This you will not wonder at, if you conlsidert that; the multitude always 'think whatever, is'wis right but a little reflection-will teach fyzeu that there must have been a period in, the World's history, when the faucet 'was' un known as a remedy; and that many centu ries necessarily elapsed before? It. Aoudd even be imagined that'loss, of blood might alleviate or cure disease. Nations, nevertheless, grew and prospered. 'to what daring innovator the-practice of physicowes the Carseiofsthe lancet, the. Annals of the art leave us invignos rances; but this we know, thatits introduction could only have been done during the infancy of Medicine; when remedializmeans'were yet few; and the mode of actionof remedies totally unknown. It was the invention of an unenlightened, possibly, a sanguinary age; and its'continued use says but little for; the. After-discoveries of ages.'or for thevhoa'sted progress of' medical; science; ilikeevery other lucrative branch of. Human knowledge, the Practice of Medicine at one.time, was entirely in the hands of the priesthood: Might not blood-letting have been: flrstsintroduced as a sacrifice or expiation on the part of r the patient for his supposed sins against an of, fended deity - for that till tvery lately. Was the ecclesiastical cause of all disease. I am the rather'inclined to this idea, from the fact that when one of the kings of Spain made his peace with'the Inquisition, after} a bitter quarrel with that body, they condemned him as a penance to lose a pound ofphisj blood, which was afterwards burnt'in public by. The s t, 3 l.

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