To open a vein has for several generations been looked on as beneath the dignity of the leading professors of medicine or surgery. In some cases phlebotomy was practised as a sort of specialty by surgeons of recognised character: but generally, at the close of the last century, it was left, as a branch of practice, in the hands of the apothecary. The occasions on which physicians have of late years used the lancet are so few, that it is almost a contribution to medical gossip to bring up a new instance. One of the more recent cases of a notability being let blood by a physician, was when Sir Lucas Pepys, on Oct. 2, 1806, bled the Princess of Wales. On that day, as her Royal Highness was proceeding to Norbury Park, to visit Mr. Locke, in a barouche drawn by four horses, the carriage was upset at Leatherhead. Of the two ladies who accompanied the Princess, one (Lady Sheffield) escaped without a bruise, but the other (Miss Cholmondley) was thrown to the ground and killed on the spot. The injuries sustained by the Princess were very slight, but Sir Lucas Pepys, who luckily happened to be in the neighbourhood at the time of the accident, bled her on his own responsibility, and with his own hand. CHAPTER XIII. RICHARD MEAD. "Dr. Mead," observed Samuel Johnson, "lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any man." Unquestionably the lot of Richard Mead was an enviable one. Without any high advantages of birth or fortune, or aristocratic connection, he achieved a European popularity; and in the capital of his own country had a social position that has been surpassed by no member of his profession. To the sunshine in which Mead basked, the lexicographer contributed a few rays; for when James published his Medicinal Dictionary, the prefatory letter to Mead, affixed to the work, was composed by Johnson in his most felicitous style. "Sir,--That the Medicinal Dictionary is dedicated to you, is to be imputed only to your reputation for superior skill in those sciences which I have endeavoured to explain and to facilitate; and you are, therefore, to consider the address, if it be agreeable to you, as one of the rewards of merit; and, if otherwise, as one of the inconveniences of eminence. "However you shall receive it, my design cannot be disappointed; because this public appeal to your judgment will show that I do not found my hopes of approbation upon the ignorance of my readers, and that I fear his censure least whose knowledge is the most extensive. I am, sir, your most obedient humble servant,--R. JAMES."