332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



function of introductory lecturer by preaching a gospel of pessimism, 

 and inoculating you at the outset of your career with a despair of the 

 littleness of life. Whatever the motive which has made you choose 

 the medical profession as your life-career and I suppose this has in 

 most cases been the advice or example of others, or perhaps some 

 quite accidental influence ; for it is a startling consideration on what 

 little circumstances the great issues of life often turn you will not, 

 I think, ever have cause to regret your choice if you look to the higher 

 aim of it, and to that which is the proper end of human life. But on 

 that condition only. It is not a profession which one who is ambi- 

 tious of worldly distinction, or eager to accumulate much riches, 

 should choose. You might, with prudence and industry, get vastly 

 richer on the Stock Exchange or in commerce in a short time than 

 you will probably after the labor of a long life in medical practice ; 

 and if you would aspire to gain a peerage or other ornamental thing of 

 that kind, you would have done better to have gone into the army, and 

 to have set before you as an aim, not the saving but the destruction of 

 life ; or to the bar, and have sold the highest exertions of your intel- 

 lect to advocate the cause, whether the cause of the oppressor or of 

 the oppressed, for which you were i-etained. Peerages don't come our 

 way, and I am heartily glad they do not, for I much fear that there 

 would not be the strength of mind to reject them ; that a pitiful social 

 ambition might tempt us to spoil the simple intrinsic nobility of our 

 vocation with the outworn decorations of a childish stage of human 

 progress. If medical practice be pursued as a mere means of money- 

 getting, assuredly it causes the deepest demoralization of him who so 

 uses it, as best things turned to basest ends breed the greatest cor- 

 ruption. He who deliberately applies himself to take the utmost ad- 

 vantage of the suffering and the feebleness of humanity, coming to 

 him for aid in its anguish and its utter helplessness, in order to make 

 his profit and we may hope there are not many creatures of that 

 vileness in the profession may have large success in his low aim, but 

 he discovers a meanness and a degradation of nature which are a 

 grievous shame to his kind, and which devils might almost disdain. 



But if you look to what is the true end of knowledge and work 

 to relieve the suffering and to minister to the comfort of man's estate, 

 to lessen the sum of human sorrow on earth you have chosen a 

 profession which yields the fullest satisfaction to your aim and the 

 largest scope to your work. We learn in order to act, the end of all 

 knowledge being action ; and the end of all action is to promote the 

 welfare and the progress of mankind upon earth. In no profession 

 are the opportunities of doing this good work -so great and constant 

 as in ours ; to the least of us, as to the greatest, occasions of tender 

 sympathy and patient help occur every hovu 1 in the daily routine of our 

 work; and no profession, therefore, rests so little for appreciation 

 upon any adventitious circumstance of time or place, or so little needs 



