o of Albinus, published in 1747, and the unapproached
figures of the lymphatic system of Mascagni, now within a very few years
of a century old, and still copied, or, rather, pretended to be copied,
in the most recent works on anatomy.

I am afraid that it is a good plan to get rid of old Professors, and I
am thankful to hear that there is a movement for making provision
for those who are left in need when they lose their offices and their
salaries. I remember one of our ancient Cambridge Doctors once asked me
to get into his rickety chaise, and said to me, half humorously, half
sadly, that he was like an old horse,--they had taken off his saddle and
turned him out to pasture. I fear the grass was pretty short where that
old servant of the public found himself grazing. If I myself needed an
apology for holding my office so long, I should find it in the fact that
human anatomy is much the same study that it was in the days of Vesalius
and Fallopius, and that the greater part of my teaching was of such a
nature that it could never become antiquated.

Let me begin with my first experience as a medical student. I had come
from the lessons of Judge Story and Mr. Ashmun in the Law School at
Cambridge. I had been busy, more or less, with the pages of Blackstone
and Chitty, and other text-books of the first year of legal study. More
or less, I say, but I am afraid it was less rather than more. For during
that year I first tasted the intoxicating pleasure of authorship. A
college periodical, conducted by friends of mine, still undergraduates,
tempted me into print, and there is no form of lead-poisoning which more
rapidly and thoroughly pervades the blood and bones and marrow than that
which reaches the young author through mental contact with type-metal.
Qui a bu, boira,--he who has once been a drinker will drink again, says
the French proverb. So the man or woman who has tasted type is sure to
return to his old indulgence sooner or later. In that fatal year I had
my first attack of authors' lead-poisoning, and I have never got quite
rid of it from that day to this. But for that I might have applied
myself more diligently to my legal studies, and carried a green bag in
place of a stethoscope and a thermometer up to the present day.

What determined me to give up Law and apply myself to Medicine I can
hardly say, but I had from the first looked upon that year's study as
an experiment. At any rate, I made the change, and soon fo