The advantages of birth and "noble blood" weigh lightly, when thrown into the balance, against circumstances of after life, and its necessities, in ourselves or fellow-creatures. In searching through biographies of famous people, of all ages and countries (to collect a chapter on "Origin of Great Men"), I am peculiarly convinced of the correctness of this conclusion. The earlier histories and traits of character--no matter which way they point--of all great men are interesting to review; and yet it is a lamentable fact that the accounts of boyhood days, aspirations, hopes, and struggles, with the many little interesting items and episodes of the youth of most great men are very meagre, and, in many cases, entirely lost to the world. In the published biographies of physicians this is particularly the case. You read the biography of one, and it will suffice for the whole. It begins something like this:-- "Dr. A. was born in Blanktown, about the year 18--; entered the office of Dr. Bolus, where he studied physic; attended college at Spoon Haven, where he graduated with honors; arrived at eminence in his profession;" and, if defunct, ends, "he died at Mortgrass, and sleeps with his fathers. _Requiescat in pace._" In presenting to the public the following little sketches of physicians, I may only say that doctors, of all men, are considered public property, and have suffered more of the public's kicks and cuffs than any other class of men, from the time when Hercules amused himself by setting up old Dr. Chiron, and shooting poisoned arrows at his vulnerable heel, to the little divertisement of the lovely St. Calvin and his consistory in cooking Michael Servetus, the Spanish physician; to the imprisonment of our army surgeons by their "brethren" of the South, that they might not be instrumental in restoring Union soldiers to the ranks; or the more recent imprisonment of a physician without cause, and the wholesale slaughter of students, in the Isle of Cuba. "THE QUAKER SURGEON." Dr. Valentine Mott gave no intimation, in his boyhood days, of the great ability that for a time seemed to lie dormant within the after-developed, massive, and well-balanced brain of the celebrated surgeon. Except from the fact of his being the son of a country doctor, his schoolmates would as soon have expected to see him turn out a second-rate oyster-man,--suggested by the ominous name of the Bay, at Glen Cove, where Valentine was born,--as to believe that a boy of no more promise would develop into the greatest physician and surgeon of the age! He was reared amongst doctors,--his father, and Dr. Valentine Searnen, and others.