Recently the most strenuous efforts have been made to render the medical profession more worthy of public confidence, but the appropriation of means has surely been surprisingly perverted. It cannot be questioned, that a youth intended for this department of human labor, ought to be liberally educated, and that he present his testimonials to an accredited and competent tribunal is perfectly laudable; but that after five years apprenticeship, and after an extended durance at a recognised medical school, he should be submitted to the investigation of a trading company, is totally repugnant to every principle of science, and is calculated to divert the attention from those generous and enlightened principles, which should actuate the members of a profession often denominated _learned_ and _liberal_. It is not the knowledge of ancient and modern languages, of mathematics or moral philosophy, of chemistry, or pharmacy, or botany, or even of anatomy, physiology, and nosology, however important or essential, which can fully qualify a man for the honorable discharge of the arduous and responsible duties of his station. He must be a philanthropist. However extensive and useful his knowledge, if he has not a _zest_ for the alleviation of human suffering, he incalculably circumscribes the usefulness of his acquisitions. There are men, indeed, who have pursued science with abstracted ardor; and there is indubitably something fascinating in those sciences, which are accessible to a medical student. But if there is an universality in Bacon’s maxim, that “_knowledge is Power_,” in what does the power of knowledge consist, but its direction to some useful purpose? Some men have directed all their time and talents to insulated departments of medical or surgical practice. Does not this make them pedantic? Although they have risen high in these departments, yet having but partially appreciated other objects, they are contemned, notwithstanding they are effecting equal good by different agency. Division of human labor has its advantages; but, if frittered into needless division, it injures the whole. Some distinguished men too have become so notorious in their tenets, that it is difficult to ascertain whether their reputation be that of paradox or merit.