ofession would allow him to be an excellent
anatomist, I have never heard of any who admired his therapeutic way."
My learned and excellent friend before referred to, Dr. Brown of
Edinburgh, from whose very lively and sensible Essay, "Locke and
Sydenham," I have borrowed several of my citations, contrasts Sir Charles
Bell, the discoverer, the man of science, with Dr. Abercrombie, the
master in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. It is through one of
the rarest of combinations that we have in our Faculty a teacher on whom
the scientific mantle of Bell has fallen, and who yet stands preeminent
in the practical treatment of the class of diseases which his inventive
and ardent experimental genius has illustrated. M. Brown-Sequard's
example is as, eloquent as his teaching in proof of the advantages of
well directed scientific investigation. But those who emulate his
success at once as a discoverer and a practitioner must be content like
him to limit their field of practice. The highest genius cannot afford
in our time to forget the ancient precept, Divide et impera.

"I suppose I must go and earn this guinea," said a medical man who was
sent for while he was dissecting an animal. I should not have cared to
be his patient. His dissection would do me no good, and his thoughts
would be too much upon it. I want a whole man for my doctor, not a half
one. I would have sent for a humbler practitioner, who would have given
himself entirely to me, and told the other--who was no less a man than
John Hunter--to go on and finish the dissection of his tiger.

Sydenham's "Read Don Quixote" should be addressed not to the student, but
to the Professor of today. Aimed at him it means, "Do not be too
learned."

Do not think you are going to lecture to picked young men who are
training themselves to be scientific discoverers. They are of fair
average capacity, and they are going to be working doctors.

These young men are to have some very serious vital facts to deal with.
I will mention a few of them.

Every other resident adult you meet in these streets is or will be more
or less tuberculous. This is not an extravagant estimate, as very nearly
one third of the deaths of adults in Boston last year were from phthisis.
If the relative number is less in our other northern cities, it is
probably in a great measure because they are more unhealthy; that is,
they have as much, or nearly as much, consumption, but they have more
fevers or oth