Delivered in the University of Pennsylvania, February 7, 1789, at the conclusion of a course of lectures upon chemistry and the practice of physic. _PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE CLASS._ GENTLEMEN, I Shall conclude our course of lectures, by delivering to you a few directions for the regulation of your future conduct and studies, in the line of your profession. I shall, _first_, suggest the most probable means of establishing yourselves in business, and of becoming acceptable to your patients, and respectable in life. _Secondly_, I shall mention a few thoughts which have occurred to me on the mode to be pursued, in the further prosecution of your studies, and for the improvement of medicine. I. Permit me, in the first place, to recommend to such of you as intend to settle in the country, to establish yourselves as early as possible upon _farms_. My reasons for this advice are as follow: 1. It will reconcile the country people to the liberality and dignity of your profession, by showing them that you assume no superiority over them from your education, and that you intend to share with them in those toils, which were imposed upon man in consequence of the loss of his innocence. This will prevent envy, and render you acceptable to your patients as men, as well as physicians. 2. By living on a farm you may serve your country, by promoting improvements in agriculture. Chemistry (which is now an important branch of a medical education) and agriculture are closely allied to each other. Hence some of the most useful books upon agriculture have been written by physicians. Witness the essays of Dr. Home of Edinburgh, and of Dr. Hunter of Yorkshire, in England. 3. The business of a farm will furnish you with employment in the healthy seasons of the year, and thereby deliver you from the tædium vitæ, or what is worse, from retreating to low or improper company. Perhaps one cause of the prevalence of dram or grog drinking, with which country practitioners are sometimes charged, is owing to their having no regular or profitable business to employ them, in the intervals of their attendance upon their patients. 4. The resources of a farm will create such an independence as will enable you to practice with more dignity, and at the same time screen you from the trouble of performing unnecessary services to your patients. It will change the nature of the obligation between you and them. While _money_ is the only means of your subsistence, your patients will feel that they are the channels of your daily bread; but while your farm furnishes you with the necessaries of life, your patients will feel more sensibly, that the obligation is on their side, for health and life.