ignored that certain successful writers once wrote "M.D." after their names. Who cares that the author of that classic "Religio Medici" took his degrees at Leyden and at Oxford, and dispensed medicine to the end of his life? Who cares that the author of "The Borough," "Tales in Verse," and "The Parish Register," was apprenticed to a surgeon? Who cares that the writer of such dramas as "Virginius," "William Tell," and "The Hunchback," was trained for a physician? Who cares that the author of "Roderick Random," "Peregrine Pickle," and "The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker" was a surgeon's assistant and acted as surgeon's mate in the unfortunate Carthagena expedition, before trying (unsuccessfully) to obtain a practice in London? And, above all, who cares that the author of "The Deserted Village" and "The Vicar of Wakefield" studied physic in Edinburgh and on the Continent, and, as Boswell was informed, "was enabled to pursue his travels on foot, partly by demanding at Universities to enter the lists as a disputant, by which, according to the custom of many of them, he was entitled to the premium of a crown, when luckily for him his challenge was not accepted?" Such are a few of the examples which immediately occur to the mind when the whole subject is contemplated. It would be impossible in the compass of a short article to deal systematically and comprehensively with doctors who became authors, or to make out a complete list of their names with an account of the works which entitled them to the designation. Any facts now adduced must be considered arbitrary and capricious, so far as the choice of them is concerned; and sequence is so little attempted that the reader will pardon, I trust, a possible leap from Galen to Goldsmith, from Sir Thomas Browne to Tobias Smollett, and from Sir John Blackmore to Conan Doyle. I put aside those members of the profession who have simply written on professional subjects. Their name is legion, but in the great majority of cases such work as this would not strictly justify their inclusion among the literati. And, on the other hand, we cannot find a place in the category for such men as Goethe or Sainte-Beuve, for though both studied medicine, it seems to have been purely with a view to the extension of their knowledge and not with any more practical or material object. Sainte-Beuve, it is true, for a short time in his youth entertained some thought of adopting the profession; but Goethe only dipped into the subject with the same spirit that he dipped into experimental chemistry and astrology.