Page:Sunbeams extracted from cucumbers.djvu/15

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ples, and the speculative husbandman has yearly expected to see the fields covered with grass, and the hills and vallies with corn and wheat, without the clownish exercise of labour. With Varlow on Husbandry, in his hands, and a complete collection of philosophical farming utensils, he has forgotten that by the "sweat of his brow he was to eat his bread," and is hourly expecting to "reap where he hath not sown, and gather where he hath not strawed."—Still here and there an old fashioned fellow, and New-England abounds with them, "will rise early and set up late, and eat the bread of industry; will sow his seed in the morning and in the evening withhold not his hand," and is secretly flattering himself that this is the surest road to peace and plenty.

Hypocrates, Galen and Sydenham, have been successively and conjointly attacked by the Physicians of the present refined age, and the medical learning of ancient times, or even of the last century, pronounced quackery and nonsense. A few years since, if a man were attacked with a most violent disease, he was directed to stimulate. Stimulants, powerful stimulants, were all the fashion; and, instead of Apothecaries shops and Lancets, the nurse was directed to the brandy pipe and the gin-case. Thus the Brownonian system had superceded all others, and it was proved demonstrably, that the reason why the children of men were subject to death was, that they did not sufficiently fortify against its attacks, with beef steaks and wine. These principles had slain but a few when they were universally exploded, and men, going into the opposite extreme, were literally bled to death; and thus, lest the system should be overcharged, all its props were cautiously, but entirely removed.