trieved, and a feeble race grow to lusty vigor in
this very climate and locality. Is not the question why our young men
and women so often break down, and how they can be kept from breaking
down, far more important for physicians to settle than whether there is
one cranial vertebra, or whether there are four, or none?

--But I have a taste for the homologies, I want to go deeply into the
subject of embryology, I want to analyze the protonihilates precipitated
from pigeon's milk by the action of the lunar spectrum,--shall I not
follow my star,--shall I not obey my instinct,--shall I not give myself
to the lofty pursuits of science for its own sake?

Certainly you may, if you like. But take down your sign, or never put it
up. That is the way Dr. Owen and Dr. Huxley, Dr. Agassiz and Dr.
Jeffries Wyman, Dr. Gray and Dr. Charles T. Jackson settled the
difficulty. We all admire the achievements of this band of distinguished
doctors who do not practise. But we say of their work and of all pure
science, as the French officer said of the charge of the six hundred at
Balaclava, "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre,"--it is very
splendid, but it is not a practising doctor's business. His patient has
a right to the cream of his life and not merely to the thin milk that is
left after "science" has skimmed it off. The best a physician can give
is never too good for the patient.

It is often a disadvantage to a young practitioner to be known for any
accomplishment outside of his profession. Haller lost his election as
Physician to the Hospital in his native city of Berne, principally on the
ground that he was a poet. In his later years the physician may venture
more boldly. Astruc was sixty-nine years old when he published his
"Conjectures," the first attempt, we are told, to decide the authorship
of the Pentateuch showing anything like a discerning criticism. Sir
Benjamin Brodie was seventy years old before he left his physiological
and surgical studies to indulge in psychological speculations. The
period of pupilage will be busy enough in acquiring the knowledge needed,
and the season of active practice will leave little leisure for any but
professional studies.

Dr. Graves of Dublin, one of the first clinical teachers of our time,
always insisted on his students' beginning at once to visit the hospital.
At the bedside the student must learn to treat disease, and just as
certainly as we spin out and multiply our academi