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 other fatal diseases.

These heavy-eyed men with the alcoholized brains, these pallid youths
with the nicotized optic ganglia and thinking-marrows brown as their
own meerschaums, of whom you meet too many,--will ask all your wisdom to
deal with their poisoned nerves and their enfeebled wills.

Nearly seventeen hundred children under five years of age died last
year in this city. A poor human article, no doubt, in many cases, still,
worth an attempt to save them, especially when we remember the effect
of Dr. Clarke's suggestion at the Dublin Hospital, by which some
twenty-five or thirty thousand children's lives have probably been saved
in a single city.

Again, the complaint is often heard that the native population is not
increasing so rapidly as in former generations. The breeding and nursing
period of American women is one of peculiar delicacy and frequent
infirmity. Many of them must require a considerable interval between the
reproductive efforts, to repair damages and regain strength. This matter
is not to be decided by an appeal to unschooled nature. It is the same
question as that of the deformed pelvis,--one of degree. The facts
of mal-vitalization are as much to be attended to as those of
mal-formation. If the woman with a twisted pelvis is to be considered an
exempt, the woman with a defective organization should be recognized as
belonging to the invalid corps. We shudder to hear what is alleged as
to the prevalence of criminal practices; if back of these there can be
shown organic incapacity or overtaxing of too limited powers, the facts
belong to the province of the practical physician, as well as of the
moralist and the legislator, and requ