YOUNG AS A PHYSICIAN. 333 
rival galloping on the backs of two horses with all the 
confidence of an equestrian by profession. 
In England, a physician, if he does not wish to lose 
the confidence of the public, ought to abstain from occu- 
pying himself with any scientific or literary research 
which may be thought foreign to the art of curing dis- 
eases. Young for a long time did homage to this preju- 
dice. His writings appeared under an anonymous veil. 
This veil, it is true, was very transparent. Two con- 
secutive letters of a certain Latin motto served succes- 
sively in regular order as the signature to each memoir. 
. But Young communicated the three Latin words to all 
his friends both in his own country and abroad, without 
enjoining secrecy on any one. 
Besides, who could be ignorant that the distinguished 
author of the theory of interferences was the Foreign 
Secretary of the Royal Society of London ; that he gave, 
in the Theatre of the Royal Institution, a course of lec- 
tures on mathematical physics; that, associated with 
Sir H. Davy, he published a journal of the sciences, 
&c.? and moreover, we must say that his anonymous 
disguise was not rigorously observed even in his smaller 
memoirs, and on important occasions, when, for instance, 
in 1807, the two volumes in quarto appeared of eight 
hundred or nine hundred pages each, in which all 
branches of natural philosophy were treated in a manner 
so new and profound, the self-love of the author made 
him forget the interests of the physician, and the name 
of Young in large letters replaced the two small Italics 
whose series was then terminated, and which would 
have figured in a rather ridiculous manner in the title- 
page of this colossal work. 
Young had not then, as a physician, either in London 
