Of the country doctors of the middle and close of the last century, Dr. Slop is a fair specimen. They were a rude, vulgar, keen-witted set of men, possessing much the same sort of intelligence, and disfigured by the same kind of ignorance, as a country gentleman expects now to find in his farrier. They had to do battle with the village nurses at the best on equal terms, often at a disadvantage; masculine dignity and superior medical erudition being in many districts of less account than the force of old usage, and the sense of decorum that supported the lady practitioners. Mrs. Shandy had an express provision in her marriage settlement, securing her from the ignorance of country doctors. Of course, in respect to learning and personal acquirements, the rural practitioners, as a class, varied very much, in accordance with the intelligence and culture of the district in which their days were spent, with the class and character of their patients, and with their own connections and original social condition. On his Yorkshire living Sterne came in contact with a rought lot. The Whitworth Taylors were captains and leaders of the army in which Dr. Slop was a private. The original of the last-mentioned worthy was so ill-read that he mistook Lithopædii Senonensis Icon for the name of a distinguished surgical authority, and, under this erroneous impression, quoted Lithopædus Senonensis with the extreme of gravity. This Lithopædus Senonensis story is not without its companions. A prescription, in which a physician ordered _extract, rad valer._, and immediately under it, as an ingredient in the same mixture, a certain quantity of _tinctura ejusdem_, sorely perplexed the poor apothecary to who it was sent to be dispensed. _Tinctura ejusdem!_ What could it be! _Ejusdem!_ In the whole pharmacopoeia such a drug was not named. Nothing like it was to be found on any label in his shop. At his wits' end, the poor fellow went out to a professional neighbour, and asked, in an off-hand way, "How are you off for _Tinctura Ejusdem_? I am out of it. So can you let me have a little of yours." The neighbour, who was a sufficiently good classical scholar to have _idem_, _eadem_, _idem_ at his tongue's end, lamented that he too was "out of the article." and sympathizingly advised his _confrère_, without loss of time, to apply for some at Apothecaries' Hall. What a delightful blunder to make to a _friend_, of all the people in the world! The apothecary must have been a dull as well as an unlettered fellow, or he would have known the first great rule of his art--"When in doubt--_Use water!_" A more awkward mistake still was that made by the young dispenser, who, for the first time in his life, saw at the end of a prescription the words _pro re natâ_. What could they mean? _pro re natâ!_ What could _pro re natâ_ have to do with a mixture sent to a lady who had just presented her husband with an heir. With the aid