But though the list of the ennobled descendants of medical practitioners might be extended to the limits of a volume, the writer of these pages is not aware of any case in which a doctor has, by the exercise of his calling, raised himself to the peerage. As yet, the dignity of a baronetcy is the highest honour conferred on the most illustrious of the medical faculty, Sir Hans Sloane being the first of the order to whom that rank was presented. More than once a physician has won admission into the _noblesse_, but the battle resulting in such success has been fought in the arena of politics or the bustle of the law courts. Sylvester Douglas deserted the counter, at which he commenced life an apothecary, and after a prolonged servitude to, or warfare with, the cliques of the House of Commons, had his exertions rewarded and his ambition gratified with an Irish peerage and a patrician wife. On his elevation he was of course taunted with the humility of his origin, and by none was the reproach flung at him with greater bitterness than it was by a brother _parvenu_ and brother poet. "What's his title to be?" asked Sheridan, as he was playing at cards; "what's Sylvester Douglas to be called?" "Lord Glenbervie," was the answer. "Good Lord!" replied Sheridan; and then he proceeded to fire off an _impromptu_, which he had that morning industriously prepared in bed, and which he subsequently introduced into one of his best satiric pieces. "Glenbervie, Glenbervie, What's good for the scurvy? For ne'er be your old trade forgot. In your arms rather quarter A pestle and mortar, And your crest be a spruce gallipot." The brilliant partizan and orator displayed more wit, if not better taste, in his ridicule of Addington, who, in allusion to the rise of his father from a humble position in the medical profession, was ordinarily spoken of by political opponents as "The Doctor." On one occasion, when the Scotch members who usually supported Addington voted in a body with the opposition, Sheridan, with a laugh of triumph, fired off a happy mis-quotation from Macbeth,--"Doctor, the Thanes fly from thee."