There is one class of the community that have been accustomed to be attended gratuitously by physicians, who have so often wounded the feelings of our profession by the course which they have pursued, that I cannot pass them by without a particular notice. I refer to clergymen. So scantily are they generally compensated for their services, and so intimate is the relation which they hold to our profession, that medical men have commonly very cheerfully made their attendance upon them gratuitous. This being the case, they have a right to expect of them, if not gratitude, at least a proper regard for their rights as professional men. But I am constrained to say that many of this class have failed to answer this reasonable expectation. The physician often finds, that the clergyman, upon whose family he has attended without charge, perhaps for a long time, gives his certificate in recommendation of some nostrum, or employs some quack, or becomes the noisy advocate of some new system just now rising into popular favor, or perhaps, in his zeal for his sect, becomes the active patron of some practitioner of his own denomination, urging him even upon the families of the physician whose services he has so long gratuitously enjoyed. Such acts as these on the part of men who have received such favors, and who by their station and character can exert so much influence, are among the most vexatious trials of a medical life. The feelings of the physician are tried not only by the treatment of individuals, but by that general disposition against the medical profession, which is to some extent manifest in every community. If you look candidly upon the public benefits[45] which our profession has conferred upon society, to say nothing of its toils and self-denials, you will be impressed with the fact, that it does not receive that respect and that regard for its interests to which it is fairly entitled. The radicalism which aims to overthrow it is in some measure countenanced by many, of whom we have a right to expect better things. Many of the intelligent and well informed pay an occasional tribute to empiricism, and manifest a distrust towards medicine, which they do not manifest towards any other science. Though they would be sure to employ none but lawyers of known skill, and would sit under the teachings of none but well educated clergymen; if sickness comes, they resort to some secret nostrum, or employ some pretender, of whom perhaps they know little else, than that he calls himself a German, and has an abundance of hair about his visage; and if they have a dislocated or fractured bone, they abjure scientific surgery as unworthy of confidence, and send for a natural bone-setter. The reasons which secure their respect for other sciences fail altogether when they come to medicine. They even indulge in a playful contempt in speaking of its claims. They banish it from the pale of reason; and submit themselves to vagaries