Other classes come also. To me, when a student of Osteopathy, it was pathetic and almost tragic to observe the crowds of men and women who had been seduced from spheres of drudging usefulness, such as clerking, teaching, barbering, etc., to become money-making doctors. In their old callings they had lost all hope of gratifying ambition for fame and fortune, but were making an honest living. The rosy pictures of honor, fame and twenty dollars per day, that the numerous Osteopathic circulars and journals painted, were not to be withstood. These circulars told them that the fields into which they might go and reap that $20 per day were unlimited. They said: "There are dozens of ministers ready to occupy each vacant pulpit, and as many applicants for each vacancy in the schools. Each hamlet has four or five doctors, where it can support but one. The legal profession is filled to the starving point. Young licentiates in the older professions all have to pass through a starving time. Not so in Osteopathy. There is no competition." The picture was a rosy dream of triumphant success! When they had mastered the great science and become "Doctors of Osteopathy," the world was waiting with open arms and pocketbooks to receive them. CHAPTER IX. THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OSTEOPATHY. Infallible, Touch-the-Button System that Always Cured--Indefinite Movements and Manipulations--Wealth of Undeveloped Scientific Facts--Osteopaths Taking M.D. Course--The Standpatter and the Drifter--The "Lesionist"--"Bone Setting"--"Inhibiting a Center"--Chiropractics--"Finest Anatomists in the World"--How to Cure Torticollis, Goitre and Enteric Troubles--A Successful Osteopath--Timid Old Maids--Osteopathic Philanthropy. How desperately those students worked. Many of them were men and women with gray heads, who had found themselves stranded at a time of life when they should have been able to retire on a competency. They had staked their little all on this last venture, and what was before them if they should fail heaven only knew. How eagerly they looked forward to the time when they should have struggled through the lessons in anatomy, chemistry, physiology, symptomatology and all the rest, and should be ready to receive the wonderful principles of Osteopathy they were to apply in performing the miraculous cures that were to make them wealthy and famous. Need I tell the physician who was a conscientious student of anatomy in his school days, that there was disappointment when the time came to enter the class in "theory and practice" of Osteopathy? There had been vague ideas of a systematized, infallible, touch-the-button system that _always_ cured. Instead, we were instructed in a lot of indefinite movements and manipulations that somehow left us speculating as to just how much of it all was done for effect.