EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
61 
plate this inseparable condition of our existence, it will not 
be without its salutary consequences if we turn our thoughts 
to the probable position of those whom we should leave 
behind, in case we ourselves were to become the melancholy 
examples of that uncertainty, either from accident, which, 
being hidden in our path, may hourly await us, — or some 
disease may be lurking within our bodies, utterly without our 
knowledge or suspicion. 
It is no disparagement to our character, as a body, to say, 
that as a general rule, we are not a money-getting profession ; 
the very nature of our duties often requiring a great sacrifice 
of time, and much mental labour, together with the distance 
which our patients lie from each other, entirely precluding the 
possibility of most of us making fortunes. 
Which of us, while he looks with fond delight upon the 
prattling boy on his knee, whose jocund laugh welcomes his 
return home, when he has for hours, perhaps, faced the 
pelting and pitiless storm; or while he receives the kind 
attentions of an interesting daughter, just dawning into beau- 
tiful womanhood — which of us, we ask, can, without a pang, 
look upon these creatures to whom he has been instrumental 
in giving existence, and whose sole dependence for the com- 
forts, or, perhaps, even the necessaries of life, lies upon the 
result of his exertions, can contemplate the frowns and hard- 
ships to which their poverty may, by possibility, and will, in 
all likelihood, subject them, should he leave them dependent 
upon the exertions of a woe-stricken wife, whose life has 
been spent in ministering to his comforts and his wants, 
upon the cold and easily-exhausted charity of friends and 
relations; or the still colder and more sickening rebuffs of 
the world ? 
But our readers will, perhaps, ask us how they are, under 
such circumstances as the above, to avoid this heartrending 
contingency ? 
We answer, that every member of our profession, whatever 
his station, or however small his income, has it in his power 
to lay by some portion of his earnings in such a way as to 
secure his family from v r ant, should he be suddenly taken 
from them. And that most excellent and praiseworthy object 
