The credulous, and those who often may imagine that they require medical advice, become the unconscious victims of the unhealthy disproportion, for the doctor seizes the opportunity to make a case, while the normal proportion of cases do not reach around. Thus, it is calculated that at least fifty per cent. of all the diseases for which patients are treated are fictitious as far as actual disease is concerned, and the remaining fifty per cent. are, in the majority of instances, overdosed and overdoctored. For this reason medical legislation would not make a privileged class of physicians, nor throw unusual safeguards around medical practitioners, but medical legislation is to protect the people themselves from imposition and quackery. The reason for the overcrowded state of the profession is not alone the laxity of medical laws, or the low standard of medical education in most of our colleges, but the general tendency of the country population to drift into the cities. Honest labor has not the dignity which its importance demands, and a radically faulty method of common-school education is another reason. Utilitarian manual methods, in which the hands are educated for useful employment and the minds to habits of industry, are to be wished for. Young men who have acquired a technical education in mechanics and arts will learn to respect labor in every department, and their ambition in life will be greater than to swing a cane or wear a silk tile. In proportion as the productive employments are made respectable, this questionable ambition to become M. D.’s will fall off. History tells us that the opulence of Rome was speedily accompanied by a decline of its agriculture, after which came the fall of the Roman Empire, because the country population became too indolent and restless and flocked to the cities for an easier and luxurious living. History in this respect seems to be repeating itself. We are always talking of encouraging the beauty and growth of our cities, but not one word of encouraging agriculture; no one talks of encouraging farm life and making it profitable and attractive, so that men and women would prefer the more independent subsistence in the country to a shabby gentility in the city. Some reader may ask, What has all this to do with doctoring? I say that the answer must already have been apparent; it becomes the duty of everyone to interest himself, that the division of labor shall be apportioned so as to do the greatest good to society. We have a national characteristic which shows itself in an abnormal conceit for everything American in a degree that is not essential for true patriotism and love of country. But when by comparisons we learn that there are abuses and errors which are destructive to a healthy intellectual and material growth, we must have the honesty and independence to acknowledge them, and busy ourselves to find a remedy for existing evils.