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the world is yet our debtor, and it is because society cannot afford us pecuniary compensation, that we have an especial claim on it for an honorary distinction. The award of the sovereign encircles the soldier’s brow with victorious wreaths, his bruised arms are hung up for monuments of his glory— distinguishing orders of pre-eminent rank await him on his re- tirement from public life ; and while these and other honours, open to his ambition, operate as the reward of his past ser- vices, and stimulate the younger members of the same profession to high achievements; it is perhaps a natural sequence, that the professor of medicine, whose life is equally at the expense of his own, devoted to the purpose of extending the term of human existence, should pass unnoticed and unrewarded.
It is almost singular that this significant fact, should have escaped the inventor of the Malthusian doctrine.
I have alluded to the impracticability of extending the advantages of education to the practitioners of the present generation. Thus far the evil is irremediable, but there is no reason why much good may not be effected by the active agency of a refining spirit, employed for the purpose of root- ing out the vulgarisms in conduct, that unhappily prevail in our profession, to an injurious extent, and prey upon the - vitals of our reputation.
I desire to see a better spirit infused into our vocation, a spirit that will tend to avert those evils of conduct between man and man, that savour of the mercantile transactions of barter, and that are founded on questions of mere profit and loss. As an antidote against this spirit, I would venture to suggest the endeavour to cultivate a more refined taste than
