e that at Washington, and a librarian of exceptional
qualifications like the gentleman who now holds that office, I believe
that a liberal appropriation by Congress to carry out a conscientious
work for the advancement of sound knowledge and the bettering of human
conditions, like this which Dr. Billings has so well begun, would redound
greatly to the honor of the nation. It ought to be willing to be at some
charge to make its treasures useful to its citizens, and, for its own
sake, especially to that class which has charge of health, public and
private. This country abounds in what are called "self-made men," and is
justly proud of many whom it thus designates. In one sense no man is
self-made who breathes the air of a civilized community. In another
sense every man who is anything other than a phonograph on legs is
self-made. But if we award his just praise to the man who has attained
any kind of excellence without having had the same advantages as others
whom, nevertheless, he has equalled or surpassed, let us not be betrayed
into undervaluing the mechanic's careful training to his business, the
thorough and laborious education of the scholar and the professional man.

Our American atmosphere is vocal with the flippant loquacity of half
knowledge. We must accept whatever good can be got out of it, and keep
it under as we do sorrel and mullein and witchgrass, by enriching the
soil, and sowing good seed in plenty; by good teaching and good books,
rather than by wasting our time in talking against it. Half knowledge
dreads nothing but whole knowledge.

I have spoken of the importance and the predominance of periodical
literature, and have attempted to do justice to its value. But the
almost exclusive reading of it is not without its dangers. The journals
contain much that is crude and unsound; the presumption; it might be
maintained, is against their novelties, unless they come from observers
of established credit. Yet I have known a practitioner,--perhaps more
than one,--who was as much under the dominant influence of the last
article he had read in his favorite medical journal as a milliner under
the sway of the last fashion-plate. The difference between green and
seasoned knowledge is very great, and such practitioners never hold long
enough to any of their knowledge to have it get seasoned.

It is needless to say, then, that all the substantial and permanent
literature of the profession should be represented upon o