England, and
send a patient with a dry irritating cough to Torquay or Penzance,
while they send another with relaxed bronchial membranes to Clifton or
Brighton. Here is another great field for practical study.

So as to the all-important question of diet. "Of all the means of cure
at our command," says Dr. Bennett, "a regulation of the quantity and
quality of the diet is by far the most powerful." Dr. MacCormac would
perhaps except the air we breathe, for he thinks that impure air,
especially in sleeping rooms, is the great cause of tubercle. It
is sufficiently proved that the American,--the New Englander,--the
Bostonian, can breed strong and sound children, generation after
generation,--nay, I have shown by the record of a particular family that
vital losses may be retrieved, 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
ve