Every man, aside from the influence which he exerts as a citizen in common with others, exerts also an influence through the business or profession in which he is engaged, by the manner in which he performs its duties and maintains its relations. There is a strong disposition in the community to separate these influences, and to assign to them for their governance two different sets of moral principles. This disposition is very marked in regard to politics. But it exists also in relation to other professions and employments. It has even extended to medicine. Men often do as _physicians_ what they would be ashamed to do as _men_. The strict morality of common intercourse is relaxed in professional intercourse. But the man and the physician cannot thus be separated. Obedience to principle, no matter in what it appears, always has its good influence; and the same universality attaches to the bad influence of disregard of principle. There is a moral character belonging to every act. Strictly professional acts and relations have a moral influence. If the physician has a proper regard for the character and standing of his profession, promotes an honorable intercourse among its members, upholds its organizations, resists the encroachments of quackery, and helps to secure a good standard of medical education, he in all these ways exerts an indirect but important influence upon the general good order and well-being of society. But if, on the other hand, he has no true regard for the honor of his profession, sacrifices its interests to his own aggrandizement, labors for success by intrigue and manœuvre, and thus gives a license to quackery, though he may call himself a strictly moral man, and be so esteemed by the public, he exerts by his professional course a decidedly bad influence upon the general tone of morality in the community, and therefore does not merit the appellation of a good citizen. FOOTNOTES: [44] Our profession, to its honor be it spoken, has as a whole, done much for the cause of temperance. “Dr. Rush,” says Dr. Stevens, “paved the way to the great TEMPERANCE reform, and that cause, at a later period, had no advocates more powerful than Dr. Sewall of Washington, and Dr. Watts of New York, formerly President of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Among the living it now reckons Dr. Warren of Boston, and Dr. Muzzy of Cincinnati, and a host of other medical men.” It gives me much pleasure to state in this connection, that at the great entertainment given by the physicians of Massachusetts to the National Convention, at which there were more than six hundred present, ‘the feast of reason and the flow of soul’ were ample and rich without the aid of the intoxicating cup. CHAPTER XIX. TRIALS AND PLEASURES OF A MEDICAL LIFE. The physician has his peculiar trials, and also his peculiar enjoyments. The principal of these it is my intention to notice very briefly and cursorily in this closing chapter.