Having descended to the very minutiæ of a long, extensive, and successful practice, to form your mind, and regulate your manners in every professional transaction of your life, I cannot doubt, but rules so directly consonant to your personal interest and reputation, will receive every assistance from your unerring consistency and perseverance, conveying a perfect corroboration of the _gratitude_ you feel, for the intrinsic worth of so liberal and friendly a communication. TO THE CHYMISTS AND DRUGGISTS. It will create no surprise that you bring up the rear of this medical exhibition, when it is remembered that the most opulent, eminent, or respectable, generally close every public procession.—You are to the faculty, what the _hammerman_ is to the _forge_; you are in fact the _arterial reservoir_, from whose source flow the rich streams, that feed the _venal divisions_ in every branch of the profession, whether in town or country. To the fertility of your genius, to the extent of your commerce, to the enterprising spirit of your pecuniary embarkations, the faculty are indebted for the great variety and striking novelties, that render them so much the subjects of admiration. You happily derive your affluence from dealing innocently around you the various _instruments_ of _death_, with an indifference that sufficiently exculpates you from the suspicion of _murder_, even as accessaries before the fact.—Your constant, and extensive inventions (for the promotion of private emolument and public good) rank you high in general estimation, and you prudently recommend yourselves to the attention of the most learned, by your very _frequent_ and _extraordinary_ discoveries.—Your advertisements (with which almost every literary vehicle teems) are alike calculated to excite wonder and approbation; they seem to indicate proofs, that _you alone_ exceed the limits of human penetration, and display a hope of perpetual existence, by setting mortality at defiance; like a groupe of _desperate hazard players_, you are “at all in the ring,” and with a degree of emulative opposition to each other, produce from your _alembics_—_bolt heads_, and _balneum arenæs_, antidotes to every ill: the only ray of consolation to the less learned is, that _death_ (often an unexpected visitor) opens the eyes of the world to the arts of your deception, and you slide into the grave with the calm and unobserved obscurity of your neighbours. The wonderful extent of your fertile abilities are constantly conveyed to public attention, through the pompous medium of “Letters Patent” and “Royal Authority,” that are at length become (from the higher arts) the fashionable introduction to a _breeches ball_; a _tincture for the tooth ach_; a _blacking cake_, or a _gamboge horse ball_.