e Professor P. at a sick-bed. The grave and tranquil
interest, the pauses for thought, the swift thoroughness of examination,
and then the delay, with, "Please, nurse, let me taste that last
medicine," were full of good lessons. Any consultant could tell you what
a rare quality is this union of precision and thoroughness.

Our profession has in its work enough of true difficulties, but we still
owe many of our worst errors to want of absolutely complete study of our
cases, and with the careless these slips are obvious enough to enable
any one who is watchful to sit in judgment on the failures. The more
delicate illustrations of the fine union of qualities which attain the
highest triumphs are, of course, only seen and comprehended by
physicians, whose general opinion on their fellows is in the end almost
always a just one. There is a potent combination of alertness in
observation, with a never-satisfied desire to know even the trifles of a
case, which, with sagacity, gives a medical mental character as rare as
it is valuable.

For such men there are no trifles, and, on entering a sick-room, they
seem to absorb at a glance matters which escape others, and yet to the
end are still so quietly observant and searching that they seem never to
be quite content with what they have learned. Not to know surely is to
them a form of unhappiness.

I remember well a consultation in a case of great obscurity, into which,
many years ago, the late Dr. G. was called, after three of his
colleagues had failed to reach a conclusion. It was suspected that
poisoning by lead was the cause of a singular and unusual train of
symptoms. Now, in such cases, a blue line around the junction of the
teeth and gums is a certain sign of the presence of that poisonous
metal. The patient, a man of seventy-five years, was known by his own
physician to wear full sets of artificial teeth, and he so said. This
having been stated no one looked at the gums. At the close of the second
meeting Dr. G. turned back unsatisfied. "Let me see your gums. Ah!" he
said. There was the stump of one incisor left, and around it the blue
line told a tale which ended all doubt.

On another occasion, a young physician well known to me, fell by a
chance into a consultation with Dr. P., the physician I have mentioned,
and the late Professor P. The case was one of a young man who several
times had been found at morning in a stupor. The attacks were rare, and
what caused them was