readily before the coat is worn out, and the flour is eaten up, than they could a long time afterward, so the physician is more cheerfully paid immediately after returning health, than he can be at any future period. While the physician is ordinarily but poorly compensated for all his toil and anxiety, he is obliged often to see the quack and hobby-rider amassing wealth by their gross impostures. Often does the scientific and laborious practitioner, who is adding from his daily observations rich treasures to the recorded experience of the profession, suffer from the _res angusta domi_, while he sees some proprietor of a patent medicine, the recipe for which he purchased of some recreant physician, or filched from some medical book, acquiring a fortune almost in a day, or some ignorant pretender, adopting some system just then high in the popular favor, as Homœopathy for example, making in a brief year or two all the display of a wealthy citizen. And the offensiveness of such cases is enhanced by the fact, that many of the well-informed and the learned unite with the multitude in casting contempt upon the labors of science, by upholding the pretensions and filling the coffers of sheer imposture. The facility, with which the public are imposed upon in regard to medicine, is a prolific source of vexation and trial to the scientific and high-minded physician. He is subjected to a constant encounter with false opinions, unfounded prejudices, unreasonable caprices, and gross misapprehensions. He hears ignorance in high places, as well as in low, putting forth its oracular opinions, as it sits in judgment upon his practice, and that of his brethren. The most reckless criticisms are made upon his mode of treatment in individual cases, and the most inconsiderate and wanton aspersions are cast upon his professional character. If the practice of imposition were confined to those who are without the pale of the profession, it would be a trial which could be borne with comparative ease. But when the physician sees his own brethren stooping to an occasional use of the arts of the charlatan, and obtaining success thereby, even among the better portion of the community, while they do it so covertly that they do not lose caste with the profession, it is a sore trial to his spirit. He cannot but regard such men as the chief enemies of the honor of his profession, though they may talk loudly of their attachment to it, and as real opposers of the advancement of medical science, though they may make a great show of zeal in its pursuit. And yet so adroitly do they manœuvre, that they generally escape exposure. This sly quackery, which is practised by so many medical men, provoking an indignation, to which it will do no good to give utterance, is one of the prominent trials of the truly honorable physician.