Read it through once

This introduction brings me to my literary relic. It is a _Dictionary of Medicine_, by Dr. James, of London, assisted by Mr. Boswell’s Doctor Samuel Johnson, and is a hundred and fifty years old, it having been published at the time of the rebellion of ‘45. If it had been sent against the Pretender’s troops there probably wouldn’t have been a survivor. In 1861 this deadly book was still working the cemeteries—down in Virginia. For three generations and a half it had been going quietly along, enriching the earth with its slain. Up to its last free day it was trusted and believed in, and its devastating advice taken, as was shown by notes inserted between its leaves. But our troops captured it and brought it home, and it has been out of business since. These remarks from its preface are in the true spirit of the olden time, sodden with worship of the old, disdain of the new: