Atlantic Monthly Volume 13; A Magazine of Literature, Art and Politics (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1864 Excerpt: ...there is scarcely anything of practical moment in the book which may not be found in the popular writings of other prominent men, --such, for example, as Brodie, Holland, Moore, Marcel, and Herbert Spencer. We say this in no disparagement; there is no second-hand flavor about these cautious sentences. Dr. Ray has investigated for himself, and his conclusions are all the more valuable from coinciding with those of other accurate observers. It is agreeable to chronicle a contrast to that flux of quasimedical literature put forth by men who have no title (save, perhaps, a legal one) to affix the M. D. so pertinaciously displayed. For there has lately been no lack of books of quotations, clumsily put together and without inverted commas, designed to puft' some patent panacea, the exclusive property of the compiler, or of volumes whose claim to originality lay in the bold attempt to work off a life-stock of irrelevant aneedotes, the miscellaneous accumulations of a country-practitioner. Such authors--by courtesy so called--are possibly well-meaning amateurs, but can never be mistaken for scientists. We thank Dr. Ray for a book which, as a popular medical treatise, is really creditable to our literature. Yet, mixed with much admirable counsel hereafter to be noticed, there are impressions given in this volume to which we cannot assent. And our chief objection might be translated into vulgar, but expressive parlance, by saying, that, in generalizing about society, the writer does not always seem able to sink the influences of the shop. We have been faintly reminded of the professional bias of Mr. Bob Sawyer, when he persuaded himself that the company in general would be better for a blood-letting. We respectfully submit that we are not quite so mad as--for the inte...