604 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
many bad habits, many likings which are not according to 
the nature and progress of things. Thus, perhaps, some of 
the subjects which I shall speak to you of in this address, 
which is intended to convey some general rules for your 
guidance, will consist of those things you may like, but 
which it will be your duty to avoid. 
A profession, gentlemen, like a horse, has all kinds of 
diseases incident to it, and may either be noble and useful, 
enjoying the favour of heaven and dispensing the blessings of 
art and science ; or it may be a poor, spavined, broken-down, 
glandered thing, disappointing all who own it or have any 
connexion w 7 ith it. 
Let me add that every one here contributes either to 
disease his profession, or to form a healthy, progressive, and 
curative part of it. In speaking of the diseases, or rather 
vices, of our profession, 1 must be very plain, and call things 
by their right names, for this kind of pathological investiga- 
tion requires all clothes to be taken off and sore places laid 
bare. In practice you will be often exposed to many very 
marked temptations, w r hich mainly arise either from injudi- 
ciously aspiring to the society of those who are above you, or, 
what I fear is far more frequent, seeking the companionship 
of those whose presence in your professional avocations you 
cannot always avoid, but w hose social intercourse you should 
ever shun ; I mean the uneducated, the vulgar, and the disso- 
lute. The stable may be said to have two occupants — the 
groom on the one hand, and the possessor of the horse on the 
other; you are the scientific authority wrhich mediates, as it 
w r ere, betw een them, but you will fall into error if you attempt 
either to rival the one or to identify yourself with the other. 
The vice which I would especially w 7 arn you against, is the 
habit qf partaking of strong drink, which dulls the edge of 
wit, blunts the tenderness of humanity, makes a mockery of 
science, dissipates all right motives and scatters to the winds 
all pretensions of being a gentleman. Inebriation, from the 
beginning, has, I fear, been one of the greatest curses of our 
profession. 
Like a nauseous steam, it rises from the low T est parts of 
our nature, and from the lowest ranks of mankind, oblitera- 
ting faculty after faculty, and strew ing the field of life with 
those who are thus morally and intellectually slain. Asso- 
ciation with low company, intimacy with grooms, is pretty 
sure to lead to similar companionship in the tap-room. A 
man can only truly associate with another where there is 
something like an equality of mind, and here the ale-can is 
the means of reducing the one to the level of the other, and 
