These extraordinary regions wear an impenetrable and inexpressible gloom. The tall houses have a sombre appearance-they look like medical mausoleums-while the servants at their doors look for all the world like mutes.

The carriages and horses have a funereal air; and even the spectral trees, which struggle for existence, assume that deadly-lively air which pervades everything in the vicinity of these ministers of death. What can induce doctors to select such gloomy spots to carry on their gloomier vocation? Is it that patients could not possibly retire from such a spot without a feeling of intense relief, or a sudden elevation of spirits, which would not fail to give a false éclat to the medical man's renown? Whatever be the cause, certain it is that no places in the world are half so gloomy as the districts tenanted by doctors; unless, perhaps, we except those painful types of an eternal grief-the Inns of Court.

The Latin districts are usually inhabited by a mixture of all kinds, sorts, and qualities of doctors; but it is the especial abode of the popular celebrity, who trades directly with the public without the intervention of the family practitioner, much as the inferior brawlers of the bar trade with their unfortunate clients without the intervention of the lawyer.

The

Indeed the legal profession has its corresponding popularities in the Dodson and Fogs, who luxuriate in the perpetual darkness of such places as Sise Lane and Chancery Lane, and who are down upon every species of sharp practice and rascality with which the ingenuity of "Boz" has so familiarised the world. inferior order of Latitat and the Old Bailey barrister have ever been notorious for the rough handling of medical witnesses; there is nothing which delights them more than baiting a doctor. Why, it is difficult to tell, unless to be revenged upon the doctor for caricaturing them with his nauseous black draught: for there is unquestionably a strong resemblance between the capped and labelled black draught and the coifed and banded member of the bar, even unto bitterness.

When the popular celebrity is consulted by a patient who is under the care of another professional man, his first step is to secure him by setting him against his medical man.

He

"Damns with faint praise-assents with civil leer,
And, without sneering, learns the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hints a fault, and hesitates dislike."

Having secured his prey, vampire-like he sucks the blood of his victim-fanning his fasci

nation with deceitful words, until health or death release him from his grasp.

These are the men who substitute one name for another-one medicine for another one diet for another-one colour for another- one taste for another—one anything for another—so that they can but substitute themselves for another. These are the men who get our public appointments by public canvassing. These are the men who cause our hospitals to sink into insignificance, and who damage and break up their once flourishing schools!

The "popular doctor" of the country, and the "popular celebrity " of town, form the superficial layer, or outer crust of the medical globe,

-that shallow stratum of medical men which meets every eye at every turn, every hour of every day of every year; but it is a very true saying, that "the world knows nothing of its greatest men."

There is a more profound stratum of medical men which meets not the vulgar ken—which delights in its own personal obscurity and scientific reputation-that solid, valuable, and profound layer known only to the more intelligent, respectable, and educated public-that stratum which comprises men of genius-the philosophical-the practical-the scientific-the lite

rary;

the men who do not trust to all the little tricks of life to earn a reputation, but whose works are known throughout the world and translated into every tongue men who confer a lustre on their country and their kind. Look at their labours! - everlasting monuments of genius and successful toil! Look at the works of the Hunters and the Bells-the Coopers and the Arnotts-of Abernethy, Lawrence, Grant, Owen, Brodie, Bright, Skey, Addison, Carpenter, Liston, Guthrie, Bowman, Wilson, Little, Hodgson, and such-like men, a dozen of whom are worth all the "popular celebrities," and "cream-of-practice doctors," in the world.

Medical men, as a class, are very badly remunerated for their services; while some are paid beyond their deserts; and of these I may mention the "popularities" whom I have described above, who rob the general practitioner of his patients by professing superior qualifications, and employing all kinds of specious artifices to impose upon the credulity of the public.

A doctor's bill is notoriously the last to be paid; it is not looked upon as a binding debt, but as a debt of honour; (?) and as his transactions necessarily include all descriptions of people, we may perceive at a glance what chance of payment a mere debt of honour has.

Those who are mean and rich, grumble at the charge-those who are mean and poor, grumble and never pay. It is too much the fashion to grumble at a doctor's bill, instead of gratefully and gracefully paying it. A doctor's bill to some people is even more unpalatable than his physic, and they denounce it as exorbitant without considering its merits;-even the charge of a common journeyman is sometimes objected to by people who wish to be considered as something great. Many people will submit one doctor's bill to another doctor to be taxed, and if the doctors be opponents, the verdict is almost always -"Charged too much." But injustice generally recoils upon its perpetrator, and, as sure as fate, the judged will in his turn be judge. Nothing is so much needed as a Court of Honour in the medical profession to settle little differences tax bills and adjust disputed claims.

Difficult as it is for the doctor to get remunerated for his toil, yet he is required by the usages of society to keep up a respectable appearance, while the stringent etiquette of his profession forbids him to do anything towards maintaining this appearance beyond putting a brass plate upon his door. And what a bitter mockery this is! Why he might just as well

put the brass plate upon his coffin-lid at once;