8vo. 72pp. Modern green cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. Scattered spotting.

The second edition, published in the same year as the first, of a critique of medical care by Glasgow-based physician Samuel Dickson (1802-1869). A fourth and final edition appeared in 1856. Dickson attacks the historic institution of medicine in England - particularly practices such as bleeding, which is criticised as 'pouring out the life-blood of an aged person' - alongside defending his own framework for medical care, dubbed the Chrono-Thermal System, from plagiarists and thieves. Interestingly, the text also includes an early prospectus of the Penn Medical College of Philadelphia.