to drugs. Soon, too, it distinguishes those on whom it can call in
emergencies, and the highest class of men who have the great gift of
discovery and the genius of observation.

From the public we can look for no such justice, and our professional
manners forbid us to speak of our brethren, save among ourselves, with
perfect freedom. As a profession, it is my sincere conviction that in
our adherence to a high code of moral law, and in the general honesty
with which we do our work, no other profession can be compared with
ours. Our temptations, small and large, negative and positive, are many
and constant, and yet I am quite sure that no like group of men affords
as few illustrations of grave moral weaknesses. It is commonplace to say
that our lives are one long training in charity, self-abandonment, all
forms of self-restraint. The doctor will smile at my thinking it needful
to even state the fact. He begins among the poor; all his life, in or
out of hospitals, he keeps touch of them always. He sells that which men
can neither weigh nor measure, and this sets him over all professions,
save one, and far above all forms of mere business. He is bound in honor
to profit by no patent, to disclose all he has learned, and to give
freely and without reward of his best care to all others of his
profession who may be sick. What such a life makes of a man is largely a
question of original character, but in no other form of occupation is
there such constant food useful to develop all that is best and noblest.

Popular opinion has been prone to decide that the physician who is
anything else than this is a person not to be trusted. The old axiom is
too often quoted as concerns us, "Jack of all trades, master of none."
But there are enough men who have the power to be master of many trades
and passed master of one. It is a question of applicative energy. Few
men in early life can do much more than is needed to learn our art and
its sister sciences; but, as time goes on, there are many who can add to
it other pursuits which greatly benefit them in a wide sense, and
enlarge and strengthen their mental powers, or pleasantly contribute to
the joys of life, and so even to the growth of a man's moral nature. The
wise physician, who is fond of etching or botany, the brush, or the
chisel or the pen, or who is given to science, does well to keep these
things a little in the background until he is securely seated in the
saddle of professional