EXAMINATION OF A PAMPHLET, 
ENTITLED 
m Mvtti meWett 
OF 
DR. HORNER’S NECROLOGICAL NOTICE 
or 
PHILIP SYNG PHYSICK, M.D. 
PHILADELPHIA1838. 
FROM THE SELECT MEDICAL LIBRARY, AND ECLECTIC JOURn/ 
/ 
OF MEDICINE, FOR OCTOBER, 1838: 
PHILADELPHIA. j EXAMINATION OF A PAMPHLET, 
ENTITLED 
a Urtrf HtliitU) 
OF 
DR. HORNER’S NECROLOGICAL NOTICE 
or 
PHILIP SYNG PHYSICK. M.D. 
PHILADELPHIA:—1838. 
FROM THE SELECT MEDICAL LIBRARY, AND ECLECTIC JOURNAL 
OF MEDICINE, FOR OCTOBER, 1838: 
PHILADELPHIA. EXAMINATION, ETC. 
“A BRIEF REVIEW of Dr. Hohistek’s ‘Necrological Notice' of PHILIP SYNG 
PHYSICK, M.D. Philadelphia:—1838.” 
This is the title of a pamphlet of twenty-two pages, which its author professes 
to be a review of the paper published in the 8th No., Vol. ii., of the Select Medi- 
cal Lihrary, &c. Having had an opportunity, through a copy sent, of its perusal, 
we shall claim the attention of our readers, for a time, whilst noticing this ex- 
traordinary production. A fly sheet at the beginning informs us, that some errors 
in the arrangement of sentences and words have been permitted to pass without 
correction, in order to save the time requisite for remodelling the review. 
Whether it was the reviewer’s time which was the important consideration in 
this matter of a correct impression, or an eager desire not to delay to the commu- 
nity the benefit of his labours, is not stated with the precision that we could wish. 
The reviewer having withheld his name, our entire ignorance of the person, will 
therefore give others some right to assert for themselves, what he has claimed 
in his own case: to wit, not to doubt good intentions, but simply to advance 
the charge of want of skill, discretion, or information.* We also declare, like 
him, that we do not impugn his motives in, or question the sincerity of, his re- 
gard for Dr. Physick, but that our business is with the review, which its author 
admits to be “ a hastily written production,”]- a feature too evident to require 
his acknowledgment of,the fact. 
A remarkable omission in this pretended analysis of Dr. Horner’s Notice of Dr. 
Physick is, that the writer, though calling it a Review, has not even stated 
whether the “ Necrological Notice” is professedly a commendatory one or a 
deliberate libel on the subject of it. His readers, however, are left to infer the 
latter by these sentences : j; “ This is one of the many instances afforded by the 
biographer throughout his notice of his entire forgetfulness of the charge reposed 
in his hands.”§ “There seems to have been a determination not to present 
the brightest side of a character, which had always been sustained through 
the severest ordeal.” Nor has the reviewer informed us that there is a single 
laudatory paragraph in the Necrological Notice, so that readers of the review 
who had not seen the notice itself, would infer that Dr. Horner, after living 
in known harmony with Dr. Physick, and with unqualified open admiration of 
his character and professional bearing for nearly thirty years, had all at once, 
* Page 9. 
f Page 20. 
Page 8. 
§ Page 4. 4 
Dr. Horner’s Necrological Notice. 
and on an occasion calling specifically for the marked expression of his esteem, 
been so clouded in his affections and understanding, as not to in the 
slightest degree, what was due to his own consistency, and to his deference for 
that truly great man. The reviewer has, also, adroitly thrown the Notice wholly 
into a libellous form, by selecting from it passages which, in their original posi- 
tion, were sufficiently explained by their context, but which have been perverted 
entirely by insulation, and by the morbid interpretation which he puts on them. 
And to make this libel of his own creation more effective, he furnishes in his 
own language a summary or synopsis of it, at page twenty one, which exhibits 
a most remarkable strain of perverted imagination, and series of arbitrary con- 
clusions. > 
After this exposition of the general tendencies of the review, we shall now take 
it up more in detail; and proceed to show that, with the use of Johnson or of Web- 
ster’s Dictionary—consultation with a discreet medical man, and that indispen- 
sable aid “ Time,” of which the reviewer was deprived for the mature reading 
of the Notice, and to make his reflections thereon—we shall proceed, we repeat, 
to show that his gaze might have become accustomed to the “ brilliantly incom- 
prehensible”* passages of the Necrological Notice. If he had examined it with 
deliberation, he would have changed his mind about its complexion, and concluded 
that the discolouration was with himself and not with the author: Or he might 
have contented himself with the conclusion he had reached, that its faults were 
involuntary—the result of want of skill; and thus charitably undeserving of the 
time, which appears to be much occupied, and we hope to a more valuable 
purpose than in writing such reviews. < 
In beginning with the “ incomprehensibles,” we may state that the life of the 
Author of the Necrological Notice has been spent in a technical routine, in which 
the necessity of a sedulous examination of facts, has precluded all aim at 
brilliancy. But whilst wo speak to the charge of incomprehensible, we would 
disclaim for the author the prefix brilliant, in whatever sense it was used by the 
reviewer, unless in that of lucus a non lucendo. 
The first of the “ incomprehensibles” for which a meaning is solicited, is the 
title, Necrological Notice. Our friend, Noah Webster, defines Necrological as 
pertaining to, or giving an account of the dead ; anffas his dictionary is not con- 
fined to the halls of Philosophy ; the term is not very far fetched, it may be found 
even in the primary schools. Butin regard to its currency we may state, that it 
is the practice of literary and scientific bodies on the death of a member, to re- 
quest from some one of their number a “ Necrological Notice” of the deceased. 
This notice may be written and merely deposited in the Archives of the Society, 
or it may be the subject of an oration: it remains with the society to determine 
on either course. On the demise of the celebrated Dr. Wistar, his friend, the 
Abbe Correa, handed in to the American Philosophical Society a French compo- 
sition, styled by him “ Note Necrologique” which is remarkable for its graphic 
delineation of the deceased, as well as for the reflecting powers of the author. 
The second “ incomprehensible” is the term “ sardonic smile,” which accord- 
ing to the reviewer means a forced, insincere one; but sardonic being derived 
from the herb sardonia, our friend, Noah Webster, has very properly defined it to 
be convulsive—involuntary laughter; the convulsive motions of the lips and cheeks 
* Page 19. Dr. Horner’s Necrological Notice. 
5 
resembling such as are produced by the use of that herb. In regard to the 
general currency of this term : there is certainly none more fully authorized by 
medical and literary use, or of which a more novel conception could be insti- 
tuted than that it meant its opposite—a forced, insincere smile. We would recom- 
mend our reviewer to the French Academy: his invention of so remarkable a 
novelty, deserves the patient discussion which that learned body extends to new 
words, and to new meanings especially such as contradict old ones. We hope, 
with all due respect, that this philological effort is the result of mature reflec- 
tion, and not a chance production of haste. 
Other “ incomprehensibles” are the dogmatic points of theology, &c. An at- 
tempt at a full solution of this part of the enigma might make confusion worse 
confounded : we therefore limit ourselves to say, that as the dictionary is still a 
useful book we reply in its sense, that dogma means an established or a re- 
ceived principle, a doctrine or creed. Dogmatic theology includes not only the 
simple and elementary religious truths; but also the doctrines and opinions 
held at various times by Christian churches. Not to fatigue the reviewer, we 
would content ourselves with referring him on this subject to Muenscher’s Ele- 
ments of Dogmatic History. 
Other criminations will now be examined of the “ Necrological Notice,” that 
obscure, unusual, and offensive term, which has every where in the review the 
inverted commas affixed to it, as if to show its suspicious character, like the word 
Poison, written by the apothecary on a bottle of family medicine, to admonish 
that none but the initiated ought to dispense it. 
The Necrologist has scandalized the Reviewer, by mentioning among theun- 
questionably.fine points of Dr. Physick’s person, that his ear was not one of 
them. As to his foot, we incline to think that there was a real mistake in Dr. 
Horner’s notice of it, owing to this member being commonly well, and loosely 
covered. But how are we to meet such sensibilities l The son-in-law of Sir 
Walter Scott has furnished a long account of that celebrated writer’s lame foot, 
which was the result of disease. Lord Byron’s acknowledged admirers have 
done the same for his lame foot, which was congenitally so, and which they 
state he was very sensitive about, and particularly careful, when seated, to 
place behind the other. John Hunter, the surgeon, had a stiff thumb. Now, in 
regard to Dr. Physick, we do not believe that he ever cared about his ears, though 
the fashion in which he wore his hair concealed them ; and we believe that if he 
had met with persons who felt uneasiness about the shape of their ears, he 
would at once have said : “ Look at mine; they have executed their office for me, 
which is all I require of them.” He was certainly in the habit of assuaging 
the distress of his patients by alluding humorously or otherwise to his own 
infirmities, to show that the former were not solitary in their afflictions. In lec- 
turing on Anatomy, he showed, with great good humour, and to the amusement 
of a class of four hundred students, the command which he had over the cuta- 
neous muscle of the neck; a control not held by one in a hundred. 
A description of personal peculiarities is unquestionably one of the objects of 
a biographical notice, and does not imply any want of regard for the object of 
it. The examples to this effect are too numerous to be denied. The most re- 
nowned of modern naturalists, the Baron Cuvier, and who was so often selected 
to deliver commemorative eulogies on departed worth, in a notice before the 6 
Dr. Horner’s Necrological Notice. 
French Institute of the philosopher Count Rumford, was not only thus minute ; 
but he informs us, that one of the peculiarities of the deceased Count was his 
being so economical of the materials, and also of the powers of digestion, 
that he ate no meats but such as were roasted. Here then are two great men : 
one regulated by, and another commemorating, what appears to be a nursery 
trifle, unless its value be tried by the proper scale. We may ask the reviewer, 
what apology has he to offer for his want of candour, in separating from a 
long paragraph of laudatory matter* the only phrases which could be rendered 
a doubtful praise by such separation, and presenting them as an embodying of 
the sentiments of the Author of the Notice 1 
Equal injustice is done in the reference to Dr. Physick’s known fondness for 
practical mechanics. The statement of the boyish exercise of, and of the predi- 
lection for them, through life, is by the reviewer asserted to mean, that Dr. Hor- 
ner informs his readers that Dr. Physick was by inclination a shoemaker or 
a silversmith ; and this sapient inference is reached in the midst of page after 
page in the Necrological Notice, in which are exhibited Dr. Physick’s extra- 
ordinary qualifications for the profession of medicine, and his signal contribu- 
tions to it. So far from his mechanical turn derogating from the just estimation 
in which he was held, it is notorious that it was considered one of the most feli- 
citous features in his character of surgeon; and that, through its astonishing 
fertility of invention and of application, he made cures where every one else failed. 
The allusion to the Doctor’s mechanical turn accounts for a great deal in his 
professional life, and the value of the statement in the Necrological Notice is to 
be measured by that scale. 
The mind of the reviewer seems to be singularly unfurnished with parallel 
instances in history, on all of the points of character in Dr. Physick to which 
the author has alluded. With more information, it would have occurred to him 
that John Hunter was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker ; that David Rittenhouse 
worked in the fields with plough and hoe on his father’s farm, and when a boy 
made a wooden clock; that James Ferguson attended to sheep in the field 
when a boy, and also constructed a wooden clock. Thus, when we read of the 
first being the author of the celebrated Treatise on Inflammation—the second 
the maker of Orreries, the observer and calculator of the transit of Venus, in 
1769, which will give him celebrity to the end of time—and the third, author 
of the Astronomical Tables, &e.; in the estimate of these three great men we 
always look on their youthful acts as the germinations and subsequent aids of their 
genius. We will make a still larger vindication of the claims of mechanical talent 
to respect at whatever age it is displayed. A survey of our city at present shows, 
that there are no more copious streams of honour and wealth than those derived 
from mechanical work. It is only within a few days that we have seen a 
notice of a second locomotive being ordered, and on its passage to Austria. 
The fabric of the youngest of nations going to one of the most advanced in arts 
and civilization ! But still farther: mechanical suggestions and combinations so 
largely and frequently occupy the human mind, that in some systems of phi- 
losophy their origin has been referred to a special faculty. In fine, the reviewer, 
by determinately making strange of every thing, exhibits so clearly the excess 
* Page 23. Dr. Horner’s Necrological Notice. 
7 
of writing over reading, that we may fairly conclude his own mental horizon, 
to be the limits within which he took the materials to furnish his pages. 
The reviewer appears also to be in great dudgeon at the account of the inter- 
view between the celebrated John Hunter and his pupil young Physick; but we 
are left to conjecture the manner and degree of criminality of the account— 
whether it was the effect the ideas of it created on the vision and olfactories 
of the reviewer, or whether it was the incongruity of a great surgeon and ana- 
tomist directing his pupil to follow in the steps by which he himself had been 
led to the highest elevation of medical science. His wrath explodes more dis- 
tinctly in the same paragraph, when alluding to the Essay Be Jlpoplexia, because 
it is not expressly stated that Dr. Physick himself put it into its Latin dress. 
In regard to this essay no one acquainted with Dr. Physick’s qualifications for 
medical investigation will think, upon reading it, that he put them to the test 
on the occasion, or made it an elaborate effort; and it is sufficiently clear that 
it was not the intention of the Necrologist to excite a doubt of his writing it in 
Latin, but merely to stale that if a question should arise on the subject, he had 
no positive testimony to bear on the inquiry. To any person at all acquainted 
with the history of graduation in the Edinburgh school, a question of this nature 
would excite no surprise. The honourable allusion in the Necrological Notice* 
to Dr. Physick’s classical acquirements, and to his classical predilections up to 
the day of his death, if it had been considered, as it obviously was, the fair con- 
text for a reviewer to judge by, would have saved the declaration now distinctly 
made ; that Dr. Physick could, it is believed, at all periods of his professional 
life have written a latin essay in a chaste, elegant, and scholar-like manner. 
The circumstances of the Doctor’s outfit have also excited the sensibilities of 
the reviewer; and from the difficulty of their interpretation are among the “ in- 
comprehensibles.” The Doctor had so little reserve on this subject himself, and 
considered it so great a lesson of industry, that there are probably hundreds of 
young physicians whose despondency he has attempted to relieve, by telling 
jocularly how he himself started. Industry, perseverance, was his saying to all ; 
and as to the smallness of a man’s beginning, the less it was the more it excited 
his admiration at success. 
Dr. Hornerf informs his readers that Dr. Physick was particularly intolerant 
of opposition and of disingenuousness on the part of a patient. The text stands 
in that relation, followed by some illustrative occurrences. But the reviewer 
has detached the first idea from the second, and given the following interpreta- 
tion, “You (Dr. Physick) are very irritable and intolerant of opposition ; even 
the legitimate exhibition of maternal solicitude will cause an outbreaking of 
your temper.” This fabrication of words and sentiments by the reviewer is 
passed off as the purport of the narrative of an author who has declared, that 
Dr. Physick discharged most conscientiously his duties to patients, and watched 
them with a vigilance and anxiety which never remitted till their fate was 
ascertained, and that he was the most perfect example of a surgeon that this 
country has ever seen. What, Mr. Reviewer, has become of those sentiments 
of justice and moderation professed so repeatedly in your production? We 
will, however, for your special satisfaction, give a key to the phrase which has 
excited you so much. It is well known to medical men that firmness and decision 
* Page 8. 
f Page 22. 
| Page 21. 8 
Dr. Horner’s Necrological Notice. 
are'the characteristics of a high order of medical genius; and that a physician, thus 
endowed, feeling the great responsibility devolving upon him, in dangerous cases, 
must either have his advice observed, or he will not remain in attendance. He 
considers the alternative indispensable to his sense not merely of dignity but of 
duty. Now Dr. Physick came up precisely to these conditions ; and no one, we 
believe, in latter years expected him to attend on any other terms, so fully was 
this principle settled by his acts, as well as by the approbation of his profession. 
This is precisely the intolerance exhibited in the little illustrative anecdotes in- 
troduced by the author of the Notice. 
The opposite of this dignified course we shall give in another anecdote. A 
. courtly doctor, when attending one"of the princesses, was asked by George III. 
if he did not think a little ice might benefit her. “ Your majesty is right,” was 
the reply “ I shall order some forthwith.” “ But perhaps it might be too cold,” 
added the kind monarch. “ Perhaps your majesty is right again; therefore her 
royal highness had better get it warmed."* 
A mere playful allusion to Dr. Physick’s notions of French medicine, is made 
by the reviewer a ghost of the first magnitude, with the following label on his 
forehead : “You (Dr. Physick) can never have enlarged views of professional 
subjects, because you are bitterly prejudiced against a nation (France) [the 
French] the most distinguished in the wrorld of science, and you will take no 
hint from her [it].” In rebuke of this aspersion of the reviewer’s own inven- 
tion and language, he furnishes a letter which its illustrious owner did show 
to the author of the Notice, and did on the occasion express his pleasure at; 
notwithstanding the reviewer’s assertion that the author of the “ Necrological 
Notice” was not one of those with whom Dr. Physick conversed on the subject. 
French medicine had made no strong impression in this country prior to the 
year 1820 : it was later even before its value was felt in Great Britain. The allu- 
sions to it by the writers and teachers in the latter country, had been generally cen- 
sorious and disparaging, the evident result of strong national antipathies. The same 
sentiments had been, owing to our descent, largely incorporated with the medical 
mind of the United States. It is, therefore, simply an historical fact; notorious, 
but accounted for by the circumstances of the period of their education, that the 
older physicians of this country did not appreciate French authorities in medi- 
cine ; and many do not to this day. Dr. Physick might, therefore, without any 
disparagement to his general merits, be quoted as under the influence of the 
impressions of early life on this subject; notwithstanding the evidence furnished 
by the reviewer’s visit, on which occasion he was found surrounded by French 
medical periodicals. An incidental allusion to English nationality is, also, a 
subject of crimination, though the point is so fully acknowledged as to have 
been noticed in all parts of the world, and on many occasions humorously 
dramatized, even by their own writers. 
The grand assault upon the Necrological Notice was reserved for the discus- 
sion on Dr. Physick’s religious or theological views. It is here that the “ bril- 
liantly incomprehensible” shines in its utmost darkness of lustre, according to 
the reviewer ; and notwithstanding his admission of the impenetrable ideas with 
which the notice was thronged, so as to “defy criticism,” and the consequent 
inconsistency of his reaching a conclusion under such an admitted chaos, he 
* Curiosities of Medical Experience, page 157 Dr. Horner’s Necrological Notice. 
9 
tells us that the “ biographer (necrologist) has charged our departed surgeon 
with infidelity of the darkest character, and at the same time attacked religion 
itself.” The extracts which the reviewer has made, being limited to such as suited 
his postulate, he has left from the middle of a paragraph the qualifying context: 
“ With strong sentiments of piety, he (Dr. Physick) was constantly in a state of 
anxious vacillation in regard to the Christian faith.” He has afterwards dressed 
up in italics, “ he was repelled from it by the invincible principles of his own 
mind—it was an incomprehensible code to him, and so it continued to the last.” 
We now ask, does the reviewer mean to say that Dr. Physick comprehended the 
mysteries of the Christian faith ? Does the enlightened reviewer himself under- 
stand the nature of the Trinity ] How a sacrament is effectual for the purpose 
under which it was instituted 1 How the unequal lots of men in regard to 
health and comfort is consistent with justice in the Almighty 1 How it is 
likewise consistent with impartiality, that it has been his purpose from all 
eternity to elect a portion of the human family out of mankind, and bring 
them to everlasting salvation 1 Or does he comprehend any other of those august 
principles, which are intended to define the relation of man to his Creator, and 
require faith to make them be received. Nothing was said of Dr. Physick’s 
final reception or rejection of Christian doctrine, simply as a matter cf faith. 
The highly estimable and learned clergyman who attended his last moments 
could give the best testimony on this subject, and declare to what extent his tor- 
menting doubts were solved. The evidence of his relation is certainly to be relied 
upon for the period indicated; and if applicable at the moment of his death, 
shows that his difficulties were all removed. This consummation we have reason 
to believe has been withheld, in the wise dispensations of Providence, from some 
of the most pious men that ever lived, but who, in the estimation of our reviewer, 
ought to be stigmatized with the opprobrious term of Infidel, because a celestial 
grace, the absolute and free gift of the divinity, has been withheld from them. 
We refer this topic, however, to the theologians. The facts are notorious, that Dr. 
Physick’s mind, for many years before his death, was in a state of great anxiety ; 
that he talked with every body capable of instructing or comforting him on reli- 
gious subjects, and that he underwent trials from which the Saints themselves 
have not been exempted. The principal object of the author of the Notice was, 
evidently, not to bring out things hidden in a corner, but by displaying such as 
were well known, to elucidate them by the lights of the original faculties, and of 
the acquired habits of a great man. Precisely the same course of trial and uncer- 
tainty is so common in the history of the human mind, that nothing but the 
susceptible imagination of the reviewer could have extracted from it the mo- 
mentous consequences of infidelity, and an attack upon religion, more fearful 
than that of Paine or Hume. Wre would say: Compose yourself, Mr. Reviewer; 
the fair fabric of Christianity, which, when its foundations on earth were yet 
imperfectly cemented, bore without shock or break, the secession and fierce 
assaults of a Roman Emperor, will stand without the aid of the eminent men 
of any country. And, on the other hand, as to Dr. Physick’s character, it is 
of such excellent composition, that it would bear the misconceptions of twenty 
Necrological Reviewers. 
To conclude with this part of the Necrological Notice and its reviewer.—A 
mind less predetermined than his, on some ground best known to himself, could, 10 
Dr. Horner’s Necrological Notice. 
according to our understanding, scarcely have adopted any other general conclu- 
sions, than that a comprehension of the mysteries of the Christian religion is 
one thing, and belief in them another ; and that if belief awaits the comprehen- 
sion, it must be unavoidably postponed during life. If on the contrary the grace 
of belief is conferred, any rational period of life is suitable for its profession 
and active enjoyment. 
The allusion to the directions of Dr. Physick in regard to his interment, and 
to the feebleness of his last days, has also excited the reviewer against the 
remarks and explanations of the author of the Notice. We could ask: since 
when has it become criminal to attribute irregularities of disposition to the lan- 
guor of illness and of age 1 Does not the whole chapter of human life, in every 
age, point out these consequences to great and to small 1 Does not the sacred 
volume constantly speak of them] Does not the pulpit resound with them I 
Can we shut our understandings in any way to them ? Is it not a lesson to all 
of us, that even the gifted Physick yielded to these influences 1 And can any 
one attach shame to him for having been bent by one of the most universal laws of 
his Creator, at the age of three score years and ten,—a period when, to most men, 
their strength is declared to be but labour and sorrow. The writer of the review 
has, however, such a singular aptitude at discovery, as to have ascertained that 
Dr. Horner “attempted to affix a stain upon the memory of Philip Syng Phy- 
sick,” by stating that he, the deceased, like the rest of mortals for generations 
since the creation, had yielded to his destiny. The reviewer, with his usual 
candour in the selection of sentences, does not however let us know that there is 
one* in the following words : “ surely to the intelligent no apology can be want- 
ing for the infirmities of age and of illness.” 
But an entire vindication of the allusion exists in the circumstances of that 
period, which, with a very small inquiry or concession of charitable judgment on 
the part of the reviewer, would have been evident to him. 
Dr. Physick’s distinction attended him even in the retirement of a sick cham- 
ber; and he paid the customary tax, in some of the incidents of the latter being 
noised abroad, and imperfectly, we may say injuriously, understood by the pub- 
lic, even at distant points of this country. Two large bodies of strangers then 
in the city—the state convention and the medical classes—participated more or 
less in the rumours of the day, and of course would convey their impressions 
throughout the United States. But an explanation of the feeble health of Dr. 
Physick, afforded an abundant apology for every thing evincive of eccentricity 
or inconsistency. An enunciation therefore of the fact by the author of the No- 
tice, was a vindication prompted alike by friendship and justice, and not an 
aspersion. It divulged nothing but what was current in regard to his state of 
mind and the disposition of his person, and it afforded the best possible expla- 
nation of their seeming inconsistency, with the man of genius whom the public 
had respected so much. Any other view, especially that suggested by the critic 
on whose animadversions we are now commenting, would have placed Dr. 
Physick in revolting contradiction with his own long professional life, and have 
made one class of his observations and inquiries in it a cause for censure, in 
place of their being, as they are commonly regarded, one of legitimate boast and 
honour. 
* Page 28. Dr. Horner’s Necrological Notice. 
11 
We join cordially with the reviewer in deploring the absence of a pen so able 
as that of Professor Chapman to do justice to the merits of Dr. Physick. His 
admitted and distinguished talents are both adequate and appropriate to the 
task; and we look for its accomplishment with interest. Any conjectural 
comparisons of what this performance would, or will be with the Ne- 
crological Notice must be unreasonable and unnecessary. The author of 
the latter only desires that he may be understood and correctly represented. 
If, however, the rules of fair interpretation be neglected, his abundant respect 
for the memory of his deceased friend, Dr. Physick, will, we vouch, prompt 
him in some form, to put the author of such perversions and his readers 
right. Of his capacity to do the latter we have some confidence: and would 
therefore request of the writer of the Brief Review, that both publications 
may be equally distributed. For this purpose an exchange of copies—we 
speak advisedly—may be very properly made, without any abatement of the 
sentiments of comity professed on both sides of the argument. It must cer- 
tainly be disagreeable to the author of the Necrological Notice, to be held 
up to the public as the promulgator of sentiments which he never entertained ; 
and still more so when taken in connexion with the last office to a deceased 
friend, especially after its discharge received the approbation of gentlemen 
of discriminating judgment, who heard it read, and whose attachment and venera- 
tion for the memory of Dr. Physick had been settled by years of probation. 
The author of the notice may, however, obtain consolation from the reflection 
that the strange misconceptions of the reviewer being real, and not affected, there 
are possibly other minds susceptible, more or less, of the same disturbance,— 
and if there were only half a dozen such, Dr. Horner, we are sure, would 
think his time well spent in dispelling their illusions, and in asserting that 
his fidelity to the memory of a great man is unshaken. He conceives him- 
self to be one of the conservators of that memory; and his efforts, however 
imperfect, will not be wanting during his natural life to do justice to and per- 
petuate it after his death; and he believes, moreover, that this memory, if 
properly preserved now, will make one of the primary elements in the history 
of American Medicine, when we become old as a nation, and a recurrence is 
had to past times for the elucidation of the state of that science. 
As to the concluding paragraph of the review, we conceive its sentiments 
to be precisely the deductions from what occurs every where in the Ne- 
crological Notice ; but, unhappily, their premises either did not reach the eye of 
the reviewer in preparing his “ hastily written production,” or perhaps being 
also among the “ brilliantly incomprehensible” parts of the notice, dazzled his 
gaze into obscurity. A captious accusation of many trivial parts of the Necro- 
logical Notice, must be evident to every one who has read it and the review; 
but the intentions of the reviewer in these respects we forbear to impugn, as we 
are disposed to receive in good part his declaration that he has no disrespectful 
feeling to the author. Still, we must assert, that the construction of every part 
of the review looks forced and insincere—we would say “ sardonic,” in com- 
pliment to the reviewer’s new light on the meaning of that word, but that our 
readers might not understand us.