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Nor has Fashion confined her baneful interference to the selection of remedies; she has ventured even to decide upon the nature of Diseases, and to change and modify their appellations according to the whim and caprice by which she is governed. The Princess, afterwards Queen Anne, was subject to Hypochondriacal attacks, which her Physicians pronounced to be Spleen, Vapours, or Hyp, and recommended Rawleigh’s Confection, and Pearl Cordial, for its cure: this circumstance was sufficient to render both the Disease and Remedy fashionable; no other complaint was ever heard of in the precincts of the court but that of the Vapours, nor any medicine esteemed but that of Rawleigh. Some years afterwards, in consequence of Dr. Whytt’s publication on “Nervous diseases,” a lady of Fashion was pronounced to be Nervous—the term became general, and the disease fashionable; and Spleen, Vapours, and Hyp were consigned to oblivion: the reign of Nervous Diseases, however, did not long continue, for a popular work appeared on Biliary Concretions, and all the world became bilious. We have not patience to pursue the history of these follies; a transient glance at the ephemeral productions of the last twenty years would furnish a sad display of the versatility of medical opinions, and of the instability of the practice which has been founded upon them: and they will no doubt furnish the future historian with strong and forcible illustrations.