Roger Bacon, the "Marvelous Monk," who seems to have anticipated many of the heretical tenets of his great namesake, ventures the remark that, "according to his honest conviction, a benevolent and absolute monarch could not do his subjects a greater service than to expel from his dominions all physicians and druggists, farca et tridente" at the point of the bayonet, as we would say nowadays.
It is probable that such an exodus would throw many honest tradesmen, herb-gatherers, almanac-printers, and bottle-manufacturers (not to mention undertakers) out of employment; but it is rather doubtful if the statistical records, or the absolute monarchy, would not gradually reconcile the inhabitants to their bereavement. Even in the century of Friar Bacon, a shrewd observer might have noticed the suspicious circumstance that patients could be dieted and drugged after the most contradictory methods without producing a perceptible change in the death-rate.—Phrenological Journal.
