account of peculiar fitness, or special education, -nor because he has a desire to be a medical man; but because his mother wishes to have a doctor in the family. Hence the Nature-stamped inferiorities we see in every town. Families in the humbler walks of life are prosperous, perhaps, and they then begin to dream of professions for their sons. If they have three, the sharpest is sent to the village lawyer, the mediocrity to the village doctor, and the inferiority to the village parson, with the view, some future day, to fill the pulpit of the parish church. If mamma have two, the sharpest is selected for the doctor; but if only one, no matter what his feelings or his faculties may be,- he must be made a doctor: for physic has ever been a mother's favourite choice.

The embryo doctor is transplanted from the nursery to the village school, where he is made to imbibe a modicum of learning, combining a smattering of Latin and of Greek. At fifteen he is introduced to the village doctor, who, for a moderate premium, undertakes to initiate him in the "art and mystery of an apothecary." His happy and ambitious parents picture to themselves visions of future greatness. Court physicians-serjeant-surgeons-Coopers and Abernethys-flit before them in their dreams; they

see nothing which can prevent the realisation of the bright future, and the days and hours are duly counted to his start in life. Already have his sanguine parents begun to reckon how many of their friends and neighbours they can calculate upon to patronise "the doctor," when he mounts his brazen plate and keeps his horse and chaise. Already have they prepared the road to future greatness by depreciating the old-established men. The period of apprenticeship is spent in pounding drugs and rolling pills-in mortarwashing and bottle-filling-in compound-making and in dressing wounds; - the daily routine of dispensing merely consisting in the preparation of some half-dozen prescriptions, varied with the seasons of the year and prevailing epidemics.

How deluded are the poor confiding parents of our medical embryo!—they imagine that their darling son is planting for the future harvest of his life-they vainly fancy that the village doctor instructs his pupil in "the art and mystery" of drugs and wounds; but what a myth!

As the curtain falls upon this first important act the scene is changed, and the tyro next appears upon the London boards, where he still enacts a part in "The Comedy of Errors;" but the great ambition of a student's life is to take his part in

the popular Opera of "Walking the Hospital," which he often does to perfection under the soddening influence of tobacco-fumes and stout, or that favourite students' beverage half-and-half.

What an interesting volume would "Footprints of Medical Students" make! what scenes of life, and death, and vice, and crime, would it reveal! How often should we trace them to the dens of infamy and vice, the tavern and the hell! How seldom should we find them leading to the church, the hospital, the dying bed! But students are much changed, and hospitals, which years ago sent coach-guards and Jack Sheppards to the world, now send out first-class men. Even the student of the olden time, with all his fabled pranks, must have possessed some sterling traits to have resisted the alluring influence of vice which then beset his path.

It is the astonishment of every one that medical men should make such steady members of society, when we reflect upon their past career and look at the temptations which surrounded them in youth. Only look at the career of an ordinary medical student.

He leaves the parental roof at an early age-is early instructed in the mysteries of life, and early familiarised with some of the most demoralising of human vices. He sees, during his pupilage,

much that has a vicious tendency-he is surrounded with temptations of the very worst description. He arrives in London, to pursue his studies, without guiding hand or warning voice to prevent him swerving from the path of duty and of honour. His parents have, in their ambition, raised him to that proud and giddy pinnacle which lifts him far above their own control,—and, like a ship without a pilot, the wayward student courses o'er the dangerous deep to the quiet haven of his destined port— the wide world's wonder! That he has had much to encounter and much to avoid-that he has been beset by temptation and surrounded by vice- that he has nearly wrecked the hopes of his family over and over again, is not to be wondered at; yet, with the exception of a few senseless and comparatively harmless frolicsthis pilgrim of the world-this voyager on life's sea, escapes the rocks and shoals-the snares and pitfalls which have beset his onward course, and sits himself down a respectable and respected member of society, and in many instances an ornament to science. When we look back upon the wild career of a medical student-the rollicking, rioting, uproarious medical student, whose midnight orgies not unfrequently result in a magisterial interview, the payment of a fine, or

the receipt of a severe reprimand - is it not astonishing that the adult or mature animal, the doctor, should ever become a steady or respectable member of society? I will say, that as a body, no men are more humane, more self-denying, none more plundered, more ill-treated, or more derided, than medical men.

As to the education and practical abilities of medical men-what can we expect under the present system? what can we expect when medical life is a mere lottery? when skill and talent have no better chance than ignorance? when men of superior practical attainments live unnoticed and unknown, while glaring mediocrity runs riot amongst life? And is this not the case? Do you not often meet with men engaged in active practice, whose vacant looks would make you pause ere you confided to their care the humblest life which God has given to his meanest creature? If

you admit this glaring fact, this common observation of the crowd, you cannot wonder at my question, Who's your doctor? With such uncertainty of qualification as we meet with now in doctors, arising from the unsettled state of medical law-I should strongly recommend you, if you ever meet with a doctor in whom you can confide, to keep to him, and use him liberally and well. There is, I am persuaded, nothing