cautious than the rest, will give some compound Greek or Latin name, "full of sound, but signifying nothing;" and he will be the doctor who knows the most. And the more difficult the name may be to carry to the patient's home, the more will it be esteemed, and valued, and pronounced when once he gets it there. The fact is, that Nature's mysterious aberrations are not always designed for man to penetrate too easily. It often needs a process of inductive reasoning to arrive at any safe conclusion. It wants the aid of microscope and test-of ear and eye-of memory, judgment, and reflection. Never, therefore, be dissatisfied with a man who does not tell you pat the name and nature of your case, or give you some crank name which vanishes from memory's page before you reach your home. He who is too apt to give a name has often nothing else to give.

I will now bestow a passing comment on a medical novelty-the connecting link between the town and country doctor. The rail has committed shocking havoc with town practices the last few years. Many doctors have suffered most severely from their patients taking flight; and, as might have been expected, a new medical progeny has sprung up-an instance of spontaneous progressive development, com

bining the essential requirements for the eccentric sphere in which it has to move and possessing the especial faculty of subsisting equally well on town or country fees. Resembling the panting, puffing, noisy locomotive which originated the necessity for this spontaneous development, the new Medical Hybrid may be appropriately termed the LoCOMOTIVE DOCTOR; and his crest should be the sand or hourglass, as representing his town and his country round at either end, and the communicating rail or road between; while the dust within is typical of his patients' end. This flying Esculapius chases his timid patients as a hawk pursues his quarry; they not only have no chance of escape, but thoughts of physic can never leave their mind-for the coloured lamps are everywhere they go. They no sooner quit the red bull's-eye lamp of town than they see it on the rail-and then again it meets them at their journey's end. Who can wonder that patients become converts to Homœopathy, were it only to escape the sight of physic and red lamps-those eternal-those everlasting red lamps-which make a railway station in the night suggestive of some grand calamity over which the Faculty is met in consultation!

Now let us inquire, What are the combined

advantages of practising in town and country? We have seen that it prevents the patient's escape from his London doctor. But is not this counterbalanced by the time lost in transitu? Certainly not: if a man know how to blow a trumpet well, it is a splendid opportunity to herald deeds of fame-to talk of titled patients -of strange diseases and their cure-to raise himself, and run his neighbour down.

But, even if he cannot blow the blast of fame, there is still an advantage in being seen and known. Picture to yourself a doctor on a railway platform amidst the gaping throng; you hear the whisper go the round-and in a quarter of an hour his name and fame have passed o'er many a tongue. Thus

"Good the more

Communicated, the more abundant grows."

I will now direct your attention to the respectable GENERAL PRACTITIONER, who is the real stay and bulwark of his profession-who combines in himself the physician, the surgeon, and the apothecary. His studies are more extensive, and his examinations more full and searching, than the physician's or the surgeon's separately. He sees every description of case, from its commencement to its termination; he is, therefore,

When

competent to judge of the action and utility of remedies-and is in every way the safest and best man to entrust with human life. the well-educated, intelligent general practitioner cannot stem the current of disease, it is folly to consult the mere physician.

The studies of the general practitioner—as we have already seen—often begin at the age of fourteen or fifteen;-he gains a tolerable practical knowledge of disease and its treatment before the physician commences his studies ; and in many parts of the country-in mining and manufacturing districts in particular—the apprentice occasionally performs important surgical operations. Thus by the time he completes his studies and commences practice, he is a far more efficient doctor than the mere physician ever is. The physician's studies are chiefly literary until he has attained manhood, and his opportunities of studying disease are the irresponsible ones of watching the practice of some hospital or dispensary. Thus, often when the public are running mad after some "popular physician," he has never had a solitary opportunity of treating a single case of disease, from its commencement to its termination, on his own undivided responsibility. For instance, when a patient consults a doctor, he takes a prescription and pays a fee—

and, in the large majority of cases, the doctor never sees or hears anything more of the patient or the effect of his remedies. It may be that the patient goes to him three times for the fee -but what can a doctor learn of a case by seeing it three times? Again, the physician does not see the acute stages of disease (while the patient keeps his bed); he merely sees disease when it is recovering, and then only for a brief period.

To obviate these disadvantages, the physician gives gratuitous advice; but here, again, it is only to patients who are well enough to go about. The fact is, that the pure physician is very inferior in all that concerns the practice of his profession to the general practitioner.

To place against this glaring inferiority — the pure physician possesses a superior classical education, which is very captivating; but the absence of practical knowledge makes him a dangerous guide in illness.

But-talk of physicians-what can come up to that flourish of trumpets which ushers upon the public stage the JUVENILE DOCTOR, in the first act of that highly popular and oft-repeated drama the "Comedy of Errors," in which he performs a most conspicuous part during the first few years of his medico-histrionic life? Who cannot