Amateur Doctors

Amateur doetoring ii excccdingly cüramon. Grcat as is the aamber of kiiments which every ycar aro proíeasionally treatod at tli iiistitntious for which special appeals are to be made all over London, it may be doubted whether the cases in whioli amateurs efery year try their hand at setting right the rickéty human machine aro nol raatljr more niimerous. Sue.h eli'orts are especially eommou in tho lower middle class. The wealthier and moro intelligent are of course chary of everything but the best professional advioe in matter of health, and tho poor aro wonderf ully ready to run to the hospital and dispensary. lt is not that they are. averse to amateur treatment - far trom it. The well-known story of the cab man who neariy killed himself byiwallowing some sort of black dranght which had been left in his vehiele, and which he thought might do hiii asmuch good as the "party it was meant for," is by no means an exaggerated illustration of tho ludicrous rcadincss with which the more ignorant of the population will take anything in the. nature of physic if they are in the slightest degreo indisposed. To ro to the chemist, for medicine, howevcr, is an expensive procceding for tbem. and when they need doctoring, therefore, they do not aften doctor themsclvcs. bilt tlioy go to the hospital, l'eople a liüle above theni in thoir station of lite are ablo to buv their own medicines, and find it cheaper to do so than to waste their time at the hospital, or to go to the private practiWoncv; and if constant practico in drugging and dosing wouldmake physieians, probably a good half of the population might be entitled to the "M. D." If this should appearto be asomewhatexaggerated view to take, let one indisputable fact be pondered over. Last year the duty paid in this country on patent madicines amounted to L160,000. If we reckon the selling value of the medicine at about eight times this, we have for this one class of medicine alono a total of neariy a million and a quaiter of money, all ot it spent ia amateur doctoring. It is curious, when ono comes to think of it, that people should be so exceedingly ready to set about the remedy of anything amiss in the system of either themselves or those about them. If a man's kitchen clock wheezes and whirrs a little, and presently begins to betray a ditiiculty in getting along, he will admit at once that he does not know what is the matter with the thing, and will have the clockmaker ordered in to attend to it. If his watch gets a little slow, and does not seem to be amcnable to the regulator, he will not even run the risk of touching it hero and thore with a little sweet oil; or if his piano gets out of tune inonly a note or two, he does not dream of iuvesting three and sixpence in a tuning hammcr and put it in order himself. He doe not onderstand the business, he will teil yon, and might do more harm than good. But if his own internal mechan?sm begins to wheeae a little and to show svmptoms of running down, if he hiniself feela somehpw a little out of tune, it is very likely indeed that ho will be ciuite contidont that ho knows all about it, and will fortliwith resort to the family medicine chest or the nearcst druggist. It may be argued that he probablv knowa more of his own interior than he does of the taaide of a olock or a watch. On the other hand, he may have been studying his own eonsliUiüon for thirty, forty, or fifty yfi&xs. Kvery man, it has been said. i- a fooi or physiyian at forty, and thoro is just enough trntb in the saying to mako it plausible. Rut thën tlie remarkable thinL is that the amateur doctor is usually just as rcady to prescribe for other peoplc's ooaatitutions as hc is for his own. Give Ltim ever so slight a hint of your symptoms, and he will at once prescribe for you. He knows, of course, that your rucchanisni Is ten thousand timos more intrioate and delicate than that of any clock or watch, and it niight occur to him, one woulil think, that in so intricate a machine similar symptoms might possibly ariso from vcry different causes. Nothing of the sort occurs, however. Tains in your chest, eh? Ah, indigestión, my dear fellow. I usetl to havo that sort of thing terribly. Try a boz of Quackle's pills. Tho linest thing in