This ought not so to be. The public should, one and all, feel that they are personally interested in upholding a well-educated medical profession. Here is a science which is confessedly difficult above all others, and in which, as you have seen, careless observation is peculiarly liable to error. How important then, that those who take charge of your health, your life, should be careful and skilful observers. And education is obviously as much needed to form good habits of observation in this, as it is in other sciences. But let me say, that whenever you give countenance to quackery, whether it be in the shape of a secret nostrum, or a fashionable system, you strike a blow at the standard of medical education. You in effect say to the physician, observe, watch, study as much as you will, we esteem all your labor and experience vain. When men of wisdom and influence do thus, as I am sorry to say they often do, it certainly casts contempt upon education, and therefore tends to lower its standard in the profession. For if physicians see, that they can acquire the esteem of the public without study and labor, many will be disposed to give them up, and take the easier path to success, into which they are thus invited. And this is the grand reason, why so many pretenders are found in the ranks of the medical profession. Before I leave this topic let me correct one error, which is quite prevalent in regard to the basis of our organizations. We are charged with being proscriptive in regard to opinions. We are called in vulgar cant _regulars_, and we are supposed to have ‘regular’ systems of doctrine and practice, and to maintain a deadly hostility to any opinion which is opposed to these systems. This may be true of individuals, but it is not true of the great body of the profession. We allow of the utmost latitude of belief. We have no creed, nor sets of creeds. We thrust none out of our medical societies for opinion’s sake. Any member may adopt any doctrine or system he pleases, however much opposed to the opinions of the great majority—Homœopathy, Hydropathy, or even Thompsonism. Education is the qualification for admission to our ranks; and nothing but a gross and obstinate infraction of our rules of intercourse, which are based upon truth and honor and benevolence, can be made the ground of expulsion.