Note 5 — LIFE IN A TUB.1

We should have thought it superfluous to make any observations on the evil effects of mercury, which we thought were acknowledged by everybody, were it not that we recently heard it designated by a much respected physician as “a most wholesome substance,” the chief objection to it being “that persons got too fat upon it.” This opinion astonished us not a little, and we felt that when habit5 and prejudice could so pervert the mind of a physician as to make him look upon a poisonous substance as a positive good, we could easily account for the difficulty which has been always experienced in converting a medical man—for the unsatisfactory state of the medical art, and its having so long pertinaciously followed the routine practice of our ancestors. When a mind cannot perceive the difference between black and white, it is in vain to place less obvious differences before it. We now quote the opinion of Dietrich as to the effects of this “wholesome” ingredient, mercury, for the benefit of the physician in question, and such of our readers as may hitherto have agreed with him. He tells us that—