Indeed, the responsibilities of his calling and its immense obligations impressed themselves on him more deeply every day. He saw that this profession of medicine was not to be taken lightly; that his work in it would be useless, almost impious, if it were not religiously performed. Even from the earliest ages this had been so. One day, idly reading a back number of the _Lancet_, he came upon a historical article that contained a translation of the Hippocratic oath, which had been administered to all those who were initiated in the mysteries of medicine two thousand years ago. It seemed to him that it might have been written on the day that he read it. Thus it ran:— “I swear by Apollo the Healer, and Æsculapius, and Hygieia, and Panacea; and I call all Gods and Goddesses to witness, that I will, according to my power and judgment, make good this oath and covenant that I sign. I will use all ways of medical treatment that shall be for the advantage of the sufferers, according to my power and judgment, and will protect them from injury and injustice. Nor will I give to any man, though I be asked to give it, any deadly drug, nor will I consent that it should be given. But purely and holily I will keep guard over my life and my art. “And into whatever houses I enter, I will enter into them for the benefit of the sufferers, departing from all wilful injustice and destructiveness, and all lustful works, on bodies, male and female, free and slaves. And whatever in practice I see or hear, or even outside practice, which it is not right should be told abroad, I will be silent, counting as unsaid what was said. “Therefore to me, accomplishing this oath and not confounding it, may there be enjoyment of life and art, being in good repute among all men for ever and ever: but to me, transgressing and perjured, the contrary.” Fine reading, Edwin thought. . . . The only deity of whom he was not quite certain was Panacea. Obviously the classical representative of Mother Siegel. It seemed to him a pity that the modern student was not bound by the formulæ of the Physician of Cos.