apparent maladies of the organs
to which he devotes himself. Moreover, in certain of the organs of
sense, as the eye, are frequently seen the very first signals of spinal
or other maladies, and if, as too often happens, he sees in some such
sign or symptom only the evidence of a local trouble, and neglects to
look or reason beyond it, he may inflict on his patient the gravest
penalties, by depriving him of the chance of early treatment of some
serious disease, involving lifelong, or even fatal, consequences. This
is a criticism on the man and his training, not on the system of
specialties which has become invaluable.

A reasonable desire to seek aid from physicians of usefully limited
values is another test of the good family physician. I know of men who
are in the habit of saying that they dislike consultations and get
little good from them. As compared to those who too commonly subject
people to the expense of fresh advisers, they are the more dangerous
class. Apt enough in cases of acute disease to bring into the case some
one to share responsibilities which seem grave because near at hand,
they continue to treat chronic cases they do not understand, because
there is no crisis of pain, disability, or danger to bring them to
reason.

Hitherto I have dealt most with the intellectual outfit needed for the
best practice of medicine, but the criticism I have just made brings me
on more delicate ground. The man who feels himself so competent that his
self-esteem forbids him to seek advice when he knows and must know he
has come to the end of his reasonable resources, lacks the humility
which belongs to larger natures, and he, too, is a man to avoid.

Be sure that the physician cannot he a mere intellectual machine. None
know that better than we. Through all ages we have insisted that he
shall feel himself bound by a code of moral law, to which, on the whole,
he has held without question, while creeds of more serious nature were
shifting and changing. What the Greek fathers of medicine asked of him
we still ask of him to-day. He must guard the secrets wrung from you on
the rack of disease. He is more often than he likes a confessor, and
while the priest hears, as I have once said, the sins and foibles of
to-day, he is as like as not to have to hear the story of a life. He
must be what About calls him, "Le tombeau des secrets,"--the grave of
secrets. How can he be too prudent or too close-mouthed? Honor you must
ask of h