maturity. But, to improve, he must be good for something at the start.
If you ship a poor cask of wine to India and back, if you keep it a half
a century, it only grows thinner and sharper.

You are soon to enter into relations with the public, to expend your
skill and knowledge for its benefit, and find your support in the
rewards of your labor. What kind of a constituency is this which is to
look to you as its authorized champions in the struggle of life against
its numerous enemies?

In the first place, the persons who seek the aid of the physician are
very honest and sincere in their wish to get rid of their complaints,
and, generally speaking, to live as long as they can. However
attractively the future is painted to them, they are attached to the
planet with which they are already acquainted. They are addicted to the
daily use of this empirical and unchemical mixture which we call air;
and would hold on to it as a tippler does to his alcoholic drinks. There
is nothing men will not do, there is nothing they have not done, to
recover their health and save their lives. They have submitted to be
half-drowned in water, and half-choked with gases, to be buried up to
their chins in earth, to be seared with hot irons like galley-slaves, to
be crimped with knives, like cod-fish, to have needles thrust into
their flesh, and bonfires kindled on their skin, to swallow all sorts
of abominations, and to pay for all this, as if to be singed and scalded
were a costly privilege, as if blisters were a blessing, and leeches
were a luxury. What more can be asked to prove their honesty and
sincerity?

This same community is very intelligent with respect to a great many
subjects-commerce, mechanics, manufactures, politics. But with regard to
medicine it is hopelessly ignorant and never finds it out. I do not know
that it is any worse in this country than in Great Britain, where Mr.
Huxley speaks very freely of "the utter ignorance of the simplest laws
of their own animal life, which prevails among even the most highly
educated persons." And Cullen said before him "Neither the acutest
genius nor the soundest judgment will avail in judging of a particular
science, in regard to which they have not been exercised. I have been
obliged to please my patients sometimes with reasons, and I have found
that any will pass, even with able divines and acute lawyers; the same
will pass with the husbands as with the wives." If the community could