weal, and who can rarely lay by sufficient for the wants of his family until that life is far advanced into the " sear and yellow leaf," ought not, upon his deathbed, to feel one single pang regarding the maintenance of those whom he leaves behind; far less should he have to bequeath to his survivors misery, want, and the marble hand of charity. It is to spare such heart-rending contingencies that the benevolent College is founded; and the public will do well to remember how strong are its claims on their generous support: for it is not a comfortable, contented bantling, fed by the superfluous wealth of city guilds, but a lean and hungry, halfperfected child-still craving for the scanty sustenance drained from the breast of sorrowing humanity—and making fitful growth whenever more substantial nutriment is given it by the hand of charity. Would that some still more generous hand would hasten its maturity, or complete its growth!

II.

I have laid great stress upon a class of doctor whom I designate the Popular Celebrity. That graven image, carved by public hands out of nothing—"out of which nothing comes." That idol,

animated by the public breath, and stuck up in every temple devoted to charity and suffering -worshipped, extolled, recommended, and consulted by the public, who offer up their lives and fortunes at its shrine, until their idol becomes transmuted into gold, and every knee is bent before it. But, kind reader, do not mistake the idol fashioned by your hand for the professional celebrity fashioned by the hand of Science, who is incessantly improving your moral and physical condition by discoveries, observations, and experiments-tending to better ventilation and drainage

to detect and check the sources of disease-to bring to light the adulterations of food and drinks -and to expose' to the world's glare the hand of the secret poisoner.

I cannot, if I would, name any one of your idols, for obvious reasons; but I may, perhaps, be pardoned for illustrating by a few names the class I am anxious to contradistinguish from them. To mention all would fill a volume; but such men as Ballard, Birkett, Critchett, Cock, Erichson, Fergusson, Guy, Gull, Hilton, Hassall, Letheby, Luke, Oldham, Paget, Quain, Rees, W. B. Richardson, Reece, G. Ross, Todd, Ward, &c., &c., may serve as examples, and prevent Professional Celebrities being mistaken for Popular Celebrities.

III.

My observations about the "Lancet at page 72, have reference to its gigantic struggles with hospital monopoly and corporate abuses, and not to its literary excellencies.

Those who can remember the first appearance of this periodical can doubtless remember also the terror occasioned by it.

It sprang into existence; and, like a volcano, threatened to overwhelm or sweep away everything medical which did not at once move on. It appeared, moreover, at a time when its prototype, the bleeding lancet, was in all its glory-when physicians never wrote a prescription without putting in one of its corners the mysterious letters "V.S.," which meant that the patient must pay the penalty of his temerity in his life's blood. It arose in those days when pale faces, swollen features, and dropsical limbs proclaimed the lancet's handiwork-when the economy of hospitals was a secret known only to a select few-when lecturers taught their pupils just when they liked, how they liked, and what they liked; and would not permit their lectures to see the light of day—when students were found on stage-coaches as guards-at "public offices" as defendants and "accused". in the streets as rioters -in the lecture-room as stable-men-in the hospital ward as jolly, rollicking fellows, ripe for a "lark"

or a "bit of chaff" with a churlish patient-in the dissecting-room full of practical jokes on poor crumbling humanity-when the resurrectionist was as valuable as a prime minister-and murder, "foul and unnatural," provided matériel for the student's knife. These were the days in which the "Lancet" began its huge reforms: when hospital appointments were all but hereditary-when they regularly descended from sire to son-from uncle to nephew-and when to have murmured. would have been worse than sacrilege. In those days, when the medical horizon was dark, and students were guided by that will-o'-the-wispOld-established Custom, the "Lancet" appeared as a bright luminary, throwing its unwelcome glare into all the dark recesses-making monopoly stand out in low but bold relief. It roused the lazy to their duty, and made the incapables tremble. Before its light, jobbery halted and staggered; and treasurers, committee-men, doctors, nurses, beadles, and porters were alike on the qui vive -each in turn anticipating a weekly bleeding from this little instrument, until his constitution was improved, and his functions performed more regularly. And how anxiously did the public and the student look out for these periodical attacks, which were considered salutary crises for such chronic complaints ! In eulogising the "Lancet," I do not profess or desire to justify all the wounds it inflicted in its desperate struggles to eradicate such a

mass of old-standing disease. It is next to impossible to cut out a large and hardened tumour, or remove a lump of proud flesh, without giving pain; and the feeling surgeon ever deplores the necessity for wounding the sound parts while removing the diseased; but he reconciles the terrible necessity by reflecting that it is for the good of the whole body. Much as the "Lancet " has done for the improvement of hospital management by the abolition of nepotism, and the introduction of what are called clinical (or bedside) lectures-much as it has done to improve the examinations for degrees and diplomas—to curtail the period of apprenticeship-to introduce assistant-physicians and surgeons to our hospitals-to improve the manners and habits of students, and the condition of military, naval, and poor-law surgeons-yet much remains to be done; and the "Lancet is no longer single-handed in the field, but has to share the spoils of victory with a host of other wellconducted journals.

In the next edition of this little work I shall have much to say upon the present system of hospital elections, as well as upon other topics interesting to the public at large; for, after all, the public have the greatest interest in the quality of doctors and the mode of distributing Hospital Appointments.

London: Printed by G. BARCLAY, Castle St. Leicester Sq.