In the first volume of the Asiatic Researches, the late Matthew Leslie, Esq. very sensibly observed, that ‘there are in our Indian provinces many animals, and many hundreds of medicinal plants, which have either not been described at all, or, what is worse, ill described, by the naturalists of Europe.’ In this remark there is much truth; but a certain portion of the very extensive meaning of Mr. Leslie, who was, assuredly, a man of considerable abilities, and who had much opportunity for research, will be received with caution, from the consideration of his avowed partiality towards native physicians; who, as I have just stated, are by no means competent to guide us through the mazes of botanical research. The state of medicine throughout India, (I mean among the natives,) is not such as to induce the belief that we shall obtain any valuable information among the _Huckeems_; of whom, full ninety-nine in the hundred are self-taught, as well as self-sufficient. What, then, is to be expected among persons thus practising a profession, to which the old adage of ‘_ars longa, vita brevis_’ so admirably applies, when we see not even one didactic page to which they can resort; no public institution where knowledge is either bestowed or received; no liberal, enlightened, patron, under whose auspices genius may be enabled to penetrate into the mines of science? This being the fact, shall we refrain from smiling at those of our countrymen who, quitting the aid and guidance of their well-informed medical friends, resort to such quacks, whose reputation they thus unjustly raise among the gaping crowd, and who have the art to propagate the most unbounded reliance on their nostrums? That, here and there, a simple of peculiar efficacy may be in use among such persons, I shall not deny; but must appeal to our more enlightened medical societies, whether, in the hands of an ignorant man, brought up in vanity, and regardless of the minutiæ of physical causes and of physical effects, even the most simple medicine can be safely entrusted? The greatest part of the burlesque is, that these highly renowned physicians, to a man, rely upon proper conjunctions of the planets, lucky hours, &c., not only for the culling, but for the mixing, and administration of their medicines, without regard to those critical moments of which our silly disciples of Hippocrates and Galen are so very watchful!