for the presumption, à priori, is, that your doctor and your friend's doctor will not agree-and your health or life will be sacrificed to their contentions.

Now as to a doctor's education.

To educate a doctor properly, he should be educated specially - his preliminary studies.

should all have reference to his future wantsexaminations should be strict and long-conducted at the bed-side-in the dead-house-in the laboratory in the dissecting-room and the museum, and not in a private room. They should be open to the world, that all may judge. With such examinations the public would have a proper guarantee of a doctor's capabilities. And although the fast young man might think the governor's doctor much too slow, and the young lady think him "scarce" genteel enough—yet no imputation could be cast upon his skill.

As things are, a doctor's capability is measured by his carriage and his livery. It is quite time the government took up the subject of medical education, and insisted on a rigid course of study and equality of examination. The ordeal should be such as effectually to prevent stolid ignorance ever entering the lists at all. It is all a bag of moonshine to advocate free trade in physic-to license every stupid lout to "kill and slay,"-and

trust to the discernment of the public mind to find him out. The public never stood in greater need of some protection than in these modern days of poisoning and witchcraft. Look at the disciples of the "Leeds wise man," and say if we are ripe enough for universal doctors? Look at the firm belief in potencies and spells—in microscopic globules and their magic power. Look at the ready ear-open to receive suggestions for the foulest crimes which villany can paint, and answer Are we ripe for universal doctors? What we need is some commission of inquiry for everything affecting public health and life. No novel treatment should be permitted to be openly practised on the public unless approved by this commission. Even the practice of legitimate medicine calls aloud for some restraint. If a simple pill and draught suffice—why should a doctor be allowed to send his half-pint mixtures and his dozen draughts? It is discreditable to the medical profession to see the doctors' boys from morn till night delivering their filthy trash at every door. You cannot walk along a street or cross a lane without tumbling over some boy, half-page, half-shoeblack, who stops you to inquire" Please, Sir, to tell me which is the doctor's stuff for Capt. Grumbles or Lieut. Gripes?" and opens up forthwith the Pande

monium lid, and greets your eyes with rows of phials, ranged like time-bleached mummies in a dark sarcophagus. A clever man would never seek the aid of so much trash. Only contemplate the horrible effect of all this filthy physic on the human frame, and can you wonder that the doctor's carriage is always at the patient's door? or only to be superseded by "the wellplumed hearse," which

But in legitimate medicine there is a wide difference between the experienced man and the inexperienced one, and their mode of treating diseases does not differ more than their mode of viewing them. Experience can only be acquired at the expense of years-it is the gem which medical youth so much despises, and which age so prides itself upon. It is the total of a life's arithmetic-the balance of the sum of our existence, after all wrong figures have been carefully erased, and all additions and subtractions made. And what does this much-vaunted experience really teach us? It teaches rather what to avoid than what to do. Thus, on seeing a patient, Memory instantly summons to our aid a host of similar cases the peculiar course they took,

and the influence of remedies upon them—and Experience decides when it is safe to leave disease to nature—or when it is absolutely necessary to interfere, and how. Thus experience is often able to spare the delicate stomach filthy doses, which inexperience would consider absolutely necessary. It will, moreover, direct us to the most suitable remedy: in fact, it will enable us to detect disease-to seize its distinguishing characters-and to know when it is really dangerous, and when only apparently so. It will point out when to give remedies and when to leave them off. Look at the ease with which the experienced man restores his patient to health-he prescribes little, but has confidence in himself, and inspires confidence in his patient, and he only employs remedies when they will aid and not thwart nature's efforts. Contrast this with the inexperienced man, who drenches, blisters, bleeds, alarms himself and patientexhibits remedies which thwart nature's efforts, and mistakes their effects for the disease: so that, what with frightening his patient and alarming himself — frustrating and mistaking nature's efforts, and creating symptoms by his pills which he knocks down with his draughts, his carriage may be seen standing, day after day and week after week, at the door of his un

happy patient — advertising to the gossip-loving world the doctor's incapacity!

But this is the serious side of the picture. Now let us look at the ridiculous side, for every picture has two sides. The doctor, by some strange infatuation, actually fancies that he has cured the disease! and boasts of his triumph. Whereas nature cured the disease in spite of the doctor, and vanquished the doctor into the bargain, only he was too obtuse to see it.

Before inquiring for what purpose you employ a doctor, I will briefly allude to that weakest and worst trait in the doctor's characterJEALOUSY! that gnawing, parasitic worm of jaundiced brains, which preys upon the mind, and kills its worldly peace. Its history is the blood-stained page of every nation, and of every age. It pervades alike the court—the campthe council-Religion's temporal throne the bench-the bar-the most distinguished men of science and of art— but which shines forth in the medical profession with peculiar malignity. Look at the trial of that culprit Palmer—whose deeds of blood brought down a nation's curseand say, was it not jealousy which prompted and supported his defence? Was it not jealousy which pitted doctor against doctor-school against school-professor against professor?