love of good cheer, but the greatest deipnophilists among them have invariably and constantly preached and practised moderation; often quoting Brillat-Savarin's aphorism to the effect that "those who feed to surfeit and tipple to saturation know not how to eat or drink." One of the most eminent of the deipnophilists of the beginning of the nineteenth century was the learned Doctor Castaldy, Regent of the Montpellier school of medicine and President of the celebrated Jury Degustateur. He was endowed with an excellent constitution, a dainty appetite, a good digestion, and the most delicate gustative sense. He knew well all the good wines and enjoyed them, together with the best approved edibles, always with the moderation of the true gourmet.

The preceding is but a condensed statement of a small part of the grave and extended responsibility of the loyal physician in his mission of alleviating suffering and of curing or preventing disease. His private practice is ordinarily less fatiguing than his purely scientific labors and the gratuitous work he performs in public institutions. But the aspirant's queries must be answered. His thirst for information is unquenchable, he wants it all at once and cries loudly for more and more; little dreaming of how much more there is to be said without the least danger of exhausting the subject. He now asks: "If the physician performs gratuitously so many varied private and public acts of beneficence, what does he expect, and how is he to live, unless he be a man of independent pecuniary means or is subsidised by the State?"

The physician is not a plutocrat nor is he subsidised by the State, and the community makes no kind of recognition for his extra services. Whilst all the lay employees of public institutions are liberally salaried, the attending physicians receive no pay for their indispensable services. It is for the rising medical men of this twentieth century to demand the recognition to which they shall be justly entitled for the onerous labors assigned to them in public hospitals. Even if he were paid for his public services, the greater part of the true physician's work, which comprises much laborious scientific investigation, would still continue to be comparatively unremunerative pecuniarily. For this labor of love, he expects no recompense other than the approval of his professional brethren, the satisfaction of doing good, and the happiness of aiding in the advancement of science to the end of relieving the sufferings of mankind. For the lesser part of his endeavors, which consists in the private practice of medicine, he does receive some, though generally inadequate pecuniary acknowledgment from ordinary clients whose conscience sometimes whispers to them that the faithful laborer is worthy of his hire. However, there are many clients who show genuinely affectionate gratitude to their physicians.

Those persons who may wish to enter the ranks of the profession with expectations of great pecuniary gains need not waste a single minute to the further consideration of the question, but go elsewhere for the worship of mammon. lest they make the noble profession of medicine the vilest of trades.

16

The true physician has always been liberal in all things, never self-seeking from the time of Hippocrates to the present. No bribe offered to that glorious founder of the science of medicine could ever induce him to deviate in the slightest degree from his high principles. Among his noble deeds was the rejection of the golden treasure and other precious objects sent by Artaxerxes as an inducement to desertion of his loved country. The integrity, honesty, and devotion of the true physician of all times has generally secured to him the respect, endearment, and unbounded confidence of his patients, particularly at moments of great peril. The most remarkable instance of this kind was when Alexander the Great, laboring under a serious illness, asked Critodemus, his physician, to prepare a draught such as would be likely soon to restore him to health. In the absence of the physician, the King was warned by letter that his cherished medical adviser was but a false friend who had designs on his life and who would take the opportunity to give him a poisoned drink. When the physician returned with the medicine, the royal patient bade him read the letter and, after watching his expression of countenance during this perusal and seeing in it the depiction of indignation and innocence, swallowed the potion and was cured.

The foregoing answers to the aspirant's queries being general and likely to awaken a desire for further information particularly about physicians of the past, an attempt will be made, in the next conference, to gratify this desire.

17

II

PHYSICIANS OF THE PAST

The aspirant's desire to know something of physicians of the past-A few biographic notes illustrative of devotion to the science and art of medicine-The early cultivation of anatomy by Alexandrian physicians-Arabian physicians-The great physicians of Italy, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany, France, England, and America.

BEFORE making special inquiries about the conditions to matriculation, the aspirant is desirous to know something of other physicians besides the few to whose characteristics reference was made during the first conference, particularly of some of those who may have illustrated the profession by great devotion to the science and art of medicine and its allied branches; asking if there be among them many examples of unselfish devotion to the sick and suffering by direct or indirect means?

This manifestation of a liking for biography being regarded as a good omen by the sponsor, he endeavors to give the pupil bits of information, for future guidance in his study, of the acts of early and modern laborers in the art and science; saying that, in the several civilised lands of this earth, there have been almost countless examples of the greatest devotion to the sick by direct means and also by indirect means chiefly through re

searches in the science of medicine and its collateral branches.

Of Greece, the birthplace of rational medicine, only casual mention will be made, and it is needless to speak now of those physicians who flourished between Hippocrates and Paul of Ægina, except of two renowned anatomists of Alexandria. Hippocrates' knowledge of anatomy seems to have been derived from dissection of lower animals, as the body of man was not used for that purpose until a century or more after his time by Herophilus and by Erasistratus both of whom were unjustly accused of human vivisection. Fortunately the unfounded accusation was not made until these two illustrious physicians and other pioneers had made many important discoveries in anatomy, and it was five hundred years thereafter that Tertullian denounced so vehemently those two learned physicians and truly good men who had done so much for useful medical knowledge and for the scientific glory of Alexandria. For a long time the physicians of Rome were Greeks, and many of them slaves. Augustus began to place the physicians on a better footing, but it was during the reign of Nero that the first free man obtained the title of archiater.

The Arabian school of medicine, which adopted the Galenic doctrines and became famous, arose during the eighth century of the Christian era. Its development was fostered by the Caliphs of the House of Abbas, particularly Haroun al Rashid. Among the physicians employed by these Princes were the two Bachtishuas, father