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by conferring them on the undeserving; and have made degrees in arts not an unmeaning title, but an honourable badge of distinction, you have given solid reputation to those who have been educated here. You have thus conducted them with ecclat to the study of the learned professions, or ushered them into other useful spheres of life with lustre and advantage. The same regard being had to the higher degrees of literature would increase these good effects. In a short time, every person would be ashamed to think of practising physic, who had not industriously cultivated the best opportunities of instruction. He would otherwise be marked out by every intelligent man, as one who had never been properly initiated in his profession, and, consequently, as unequal to the task which he had presumptuously engaged in.
If the several parts of the design, which I have pointed out as practicable to execute, meet with that attention which they Teem to merit, it is not to be doubted that, in a short time, medicine will put on the form of a regular science, and be successfully cultivated in the College. And supposing we are not able to meet with gentlemen already in circumstances to engage in every part of the work, we may however hope that a laudable ambition, sentiments of honour, and the interest of the public weal will prompt some of the rising students, a-
