insufficiency of the market-place remedies proposed. Have you a right,
then, to turn on me, and call for some other prescription, warranted to
cure, in place of the nostrums so loudly advertised by the sciolists and
the dabblers of the day, and by me so contemptuously set aside? I
confess I am unable to respond, or even to attempt a response to any
such demand. I am not altogether a quack, nor is this a county fair.

"Paracelsus," so denominated, was one of Robert Browning's earlier
poems. In it he causes the fifteenth-century alchemist and forerunner of
all modern pharmaceutical chemistry, to declare that as the result of
long travel and much research


"I possess
Two sorts of knowledge: one,--vast, shadowy,
Hints of the unbounded aim....
The other consists of many secrets, caught
While bent on nobler prize,--perhaps a few
Prime principles which may conduct to much:
These last I offer."


So, _longo intervallo_, I have a few suggestions,--the result of an
observation extending, as I said at the beginning, over the lives of two
generations and a connection with many great events in which I have
borne a part,--a part not prominent indeed, and more generally, I
acknowledge, mistaken than correct. My errors, however, have at least
made me cautious and doubtful of my own conclusions. I submit them for
what they are worth. Not much, I fear.