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SCEPTICISM.
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Credulity has been justly defined, Belief without Reason. Scepticism is its opposite, Reason without Belief and is the natural and invariable consequence of credulity: for it may be generally observed, that men who believe without reason, are succeeded by others whom no reasoning can convince; a fact which has occasioned many extraordinary and violent revolutions in the Materia Medica, and a knowledge of it will enable us to explain the otherwise unaccountable rise and fall of many useless, as well as important articles. It will also suggest to the reflecting practitioner, a caution of great moment, to avoid the dangerous fault imputed to Galen by Dioscorides, of ascribing too many and too great virtues to one and the same medicine. By bestowing unworthy and extravagant praise upon a remedy, we in reality do but detract from its reputation,[36] and run the risk of banishing it from practice; for when the sober practitioner discovers by experience that a medicine falls so far short of the efficacy ascribed to it, he abandons its use in disgust, and is even unwilling to concede to it that degree of merit to which in truth and justice it may be entitled; the inflated eulogiums bestowed upon the operation of Digitalis in pulmonary diseases, excited, for a time, a very unfair impression against its use; and the injudicious manner in which the antisyphilitic powers of Nitric Acid have been aggrandised, had very nearly exploded a valuable auxiliary from modern practice.