Page:Quackery Unmasked.djvu/233

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ECLECTICISM.
229

can do any more than this; and if Eclecticism did all this, we would cheerfully extend to her the hand of fellowship, and rejoice to labor with her in the great cause of genuine philanthropy.

But this is not the character of that Eclecticism which we see moving around us. A very large majority of that class of practitioners are ignorant of the rudiments of medical science—men who were bred to some other employment, but, not contented to remain in their own appropriate condition, aspired to be gods of some kind, and therefore left some honorable vocation which gave them employment and support, and surreptitiously entered the arena of medicine. Many of these men commenced their career as Thomsonians, then became Botanic doctors, and at length, in the course of their transmigrations, have reached Eclecticism. How soon they will undergo another metamorphosis, and become Homœopathists, or Chrono-Thermalists, it is impossible to say; but neither they, nor the public, will be likely to gain or lose much by their frequent mutations.

It is said that there are some educated and