Having passed the tedious years of abstruse study and intense application, necessary to your initiation in the mysteries of physic, and replete with a perfect remembrance of all the requisites to this _great art_, we suppose you recently emerged from the obscurity of _dreary walls_ and _dull professors_, a phenomænon of universal knowledge and _family_ admiration. The various and elaborate examinations you have passed, with scholastic approbation, having relieved you from the constantly accumulating load of anxiety, you are at length launched into life under a new character, and daily pant to display the dignity of your profession, in the happy appendage of _M. D._ to the prescriptive initials of your name. You are no longer to be considered a student labouring in the heavy trammels of _unintelligible_ lectures upon _philosophy_, _anatomy_, _botany_, _chemistry_, and the _materia medica_, with all their distinct and consequent advantages; or investigating the actual properties of _electrical fire_ and MAGNETIC ENTHUSIASM, but stamped (by royal authority) with the full force of physical agency, and have derived from your _merit_ unlimited permission to _cure_, “_kill_ or _destroy_,” to the best of your knowledge and abilities, “so help you “God.” The professional path you now begin to tread, is so replete with danger, and the probability of success so very uncertain, that the fertile world have not omitted to make it proverbial, “A physician never begins to get bread, till he has no “teeth to eat it.” The truth of this may perhaps have been _lamentingly_ acknowledged by some of the most _learned men_ that ever became dependant upon a _capricious_ world for _precarious_ subsistance. This palpable fact may concisely serve to convince you, your embarkation (with all its alluring prospects) will not only be encumbered with difficulties, but your ultimate gratification of success exceedingly doubtful. Great depth of learning may afford consolation to the equity of your own feelings (if you fortunately possess them) but it is by no means necessary to the acquisition of _public opinion_, however it may tend to contribute to the general good. To avoid entering into a sentimental disquisition upon the _honesty_, _integrity_, or _strict propriety_ of the maxims I proceed to lay down for your future conduct to obtain professional splendour, and _insure success_; I avail myself of the privilege I possess, to wave every consideration of the _conscientious kind_, and once more observe (without adverting to their consistency) they are adduced only as the unavoidable traits of character, and modes of behaviour, by which alone (in the present age) you can possibly hope for the least proportional share of practice as a physician.