I have read and heard many definitions of what really constitutes a professional man. Whatever else, however, may characterize the nature of his calling, it seems to me plain that no man can be thought a true or worthy member of a profession who does not admit, both in theory and in the rules and practices of his life, that he has a public function to serve, and that he must frequently be at some discomfort or disadvantage because of the calls of professional duty. The laborer is worthy of his hire; and the professional man is entitled to obtain, if he can, a competence for himself and his family from the useful and productive service he is rendering to his fellow men. He may even, through genius or through the great confidence his character and skill inspire, gain considerable wealth in the practice of his profession. But if he is a true professional man he does not derive his incentive to effort solely or chiefly from the pecuniary gains that his profession brings him. Nor is the amount of his income regarded among the fellow members of his profession as the true test or measure of his success. Thus the lawyer, in the theory of his profession, bears an important public relation to the dispensing of justice and to the protection of the innocent and the feeble. He is not a private person, but a part of the system for supporting the reign of law and of right in the community. Historically, in this country, the lawyer has also borne a great part in the making and administering of our institutions of government. If, as some of us think, the ethical code of that profession needs to be somewhat revised in view of present-day conditions, and needs also to be more sternly applied to some of the members of the profession, it is true, none the less, that there clearly belongs to this great calling a series of duties of a public nature, some of them imposed by the laws of the land, and others inherent in the very nature of the occupation itself. It is true in an even more marked and undeniable fashion that the profession of medicine, by virtue of its public and social aspects, is distinguished in a marked way from a calling in life in which a man might feel that what he did was strictly his own business, subject to nobody's scrutiny, or inquiry, or interference. The physician's public obligation is in part prescribed by the laws of the State which regulate medical practice, and in very large part by the professional codes which have been evolved by the profession itself for its own guidance. It is not the amount of his fee that the overworked doctor is thinking about when he risks his own health in response to night calls, or when he devotes himself to some especially painful or difficult case. Nor is it a mere consideration of his possible earnings that would deter him from seeking comfort and safety by taking his family to Europe at a time when an epidemic had broken out in his own neighborhood.