There are physicians who can cure every disease that flesh is heir to--_excepting one_. 2. Apply in your need only to a respectable physician. 3. Give your preference to such as administer the smallest quantities of medicine--_and are successful in their practice_. * * * * * I have barely begun to exhaust the material I have been years collecting for this chapter; but I must desist, to give room for other important expositions. [Illustration] IV. MANUFACTURED DOCTORS. "One says, 'I'm not of any school; No living master gives me rule; Nor do I in the old tracks tread; I scorn to learn aught from the dead.' Which means, if I am not mistook, 'I am an ass on my own hook.'" A BOSTON BARBER AS M. D.--A BARBER "GONE TO POT."--FOOLS MADE DOCTORS.--BAKERS.--BARBERS.--"A LUCKY DOG."--TINKERS.--ROYAL FAVORS.--"LITTLE CARVER DAVY."--A BUTCHER'S BLOCKHEAD.--A SWEEPING VISIT.--HOP-PED FROM OBSCURITY.--PEDAGOGUES TURN DOCTORS.--ARBUTHNOT.--"A QUAKER."--"WALKS OFF ON HIS EAR."--WEAVERS AND BASKET-MAKERS.--A TOUGH PRINCE; REQUIRED THREE M. D.'S TO KILL HIM.--MARAT A HORSE DOCTOR.--A MERRY PARSON.--BLACK MAIL.--POLICE AS A MIDWIFE, ETC., ETC. "Every man is either a physician or a fool at forty," says the old proverb. "May not a man be both?" suggested Canning, in the presence of a circle of friends, before whom Sir Henry Halford happened to quote the old saying. "There is generally a fool in every family, whom the parents select at once for a priest or a physician," said Peter Pindar. He was good authority. I am of the opinion that there are many whose mental capacity has been overrated, who have made doctors of themselves; but we are not to treat of fools in this chapter, but of men whom _circumstances_ have created physicians, and of men who, in spite of circumstances of birth or education, have made themselves doctors. In the choice of a trade or profession, every young man should weigh carefully his natural capacity to the pursuit selected. His parents or guardians should consult the youth's adaptability rather than their own convenience. How many have dragged out a miserable existence by ill choice of a calling! Men who were destined by nature to be wood-sawyers and diggers of trenches, are found daily taking upon themselves the immense responsibility of teaching those whose mental calibre is far above their own, or assuming the greater responsibility of administering to the afflicted. If a man finds himself adapted to a higher calling than that originally selected for him by his friends, by all means let him "come up higher;" but too many by far have changed from a trade to a profession to which they had no adaptability. So we find men in the medical profession who were better as they were,--bakers, barbers, butchers, tailors, tinkers, pedagogues, cobblers, horse doctors, etc., etc.