considerable measure, to the entire frankness of my explanations as to any diagnostic, prognostic, therapeutic, and hygienic views in my cases; as well as the pathology of them.

Some of the brethren, chiefly, I presume, those who have not very clear and concise views of their own on medical topics, are bitterly opposed to all explanation, on the ground that our principles of science are too recondite for the vulgar to be able to appreciate either them or the facts on which they rest. I have occasionally met with difficulties, in consultation, from the opposition of some of the brethren to my desire to let the patient fully into my opinions. If a man really have any opinions, that are honest and clear, and well founded, why should he conceal them? I confess my belief, that where a physician forms perfectly transparent views of his cases, there is no need for the powdered wig and the gold-headed cane, the mysterious nod, and all the apparatus of deception that we might look for rather in old Felix Plater, or Horace Augenius, than in a modern physician, who is, or ought to be, a modern gentleman and man of honor; and, as such, above all false pretences-open, candid, and manly.

Now, I sincerely believe, that where you desire to effect a cure, and you meet with obstruction through the timidity, the doubts, or apprehensions of the patient, you will only have to speak common sense, and to take out your pencil, and, on a sheet of paper, make a few well sketched diagrams of parts, organs, and relations of parts and organs, in order to bring the recusant back to a truer and firmer faith than before, by convincing his judgment and winning his inclination. Yea, verily, you shall sustain the fainting hope and the dying faith of the sick girl, for days and for weeks, and through months of pain, if you speak the truth and explain the truth; if you show the hope and have the hope; if you explain the power and really possess it.

If you have not the confidence of your patients, it is because you either do not merit it by your science, your skill, and your temper; or because possessing all these, you are destitute of, what I beg you to excuse me for calling in a grave book by a slight term, gumption. Depend upon it, my dear young gentlemen, there are plenty of people, "plenty as blackberries," who are very learned and very shining, except when you come to rub them, and who lose all shining quality, because they have not and cannot take a real polish.

The celebrated Dr. Clarke, of London, from whose lectures that capital little midwifery book, called the London Practice of Midwifery, was pirated, says, somewhere in its pages, that one Doctor, by his good sense, shall retain the entire confidence of the woman in labor through the most painful protractedness, while another would lose her confidence, in a very short time, of hope deferred; and that, not because he hath not ability as a prescriber equal to the other, but from some fault of manner, expression, or conversation.

If you would be learned men, it is well; but it is better to be wise men. A man may be wise without being learned; but it is not uncommon to be learned, and yet to be a perfect ass in all that relates to what I might term administration, or action. Let your light, therefore, shine among men, and do not conceal it under a bushel of gawkeyness; or some stupid conceit of your personal dignity; or, what is still more asinine, the dignity of your calling. Dignity is you, not physic, nor the practice thereof. Did you never hear that

"Worth makes the man, the want of it the fellow,

And all the rest is leather and prunella?"

I have seen dignified shoemakers, carters, butchers, and even a very dignified tailor, and I have known philosophers and very learned men without dignity. Believe me, there is true dignity in great virtue, great information, and great power to diffuse, apply, and make that information useful to our fellow men. Such is the dignity you should strive to attain.

If I could give you the best piece of advice in my power, I think I should give you this advice; namely, in all your dealings with mankind as physicians, and in all your life-doings, strive, first, to increase the boundaries of your knowledge; and, second, strive to make that knowledge as vulgar, as popular as possible. Be a reformer in this particular, and you will, should you succeed, become the real founder of a Sect in medicine, and that sect you may baptize as the Young Physic that Dr. Forbes advocates. That will be the true young physic, which succeeds in bringing down Old Physic to the level of this common sense age.

I say again, therefore, wherever you place yourself, be sure to have no concealment, no mystery, no pretence; but endeavor, in the clearest manner, not to assert, but to show your claims to

superior powers in that great utilitarian avocation of curing the sick and the wounded; an avocation which is almost, I say it with reverence, next in goodness to the mission of Christ, who went about clothed with power and authority,—εγείρειν τους νεκρους καί ζωοποιείν.

In order fully to discharge the duties of this great mission, is it not indispensable that you should prepare yourselves for its offices by suitable preparation of the mind and person? Of the mind, by arming it with knowledge and wisdom, with prudence and patience, with firmness to encounter all vexation and responsibility, with charity and liberality, and with all that armature of the soul which alone can render men worthy to be called Expo, for none are so but those whose condition has raised them above the grossness and sensuality of the corporeal nature, rendering the body the servant and the minister, not the tyrant of the soul and the heart, that ought to "sit lightly on Reason's throne;" not as crushing, but adorning the intellect with noble sentiments.

It is difficult to say how a man, in forming his manners, should proceed. Indeed, there is, probably, no art so great to form the manners as that which teaches us to keep the temper and the desires of the soul within the just bounds within which it is contained among all true followers of the Christ. To be a true and accomplished gentleman, one should "do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God." Any person, under such guidance, cannot fail to have manners acceptable in all forms and ranks of society, where business may present him.

A special regard to one's person is also a very indispensable means of success, not in making money, but in curing the sick. The sick are affected by the presence of the physician. One well dressed, of good manners, of agreeable conversation, neither too grave nor too gay, would, cæteris paribus, inspire more confidence, infuse larger courage, longer patience, and greater hope, and therein succeed more surely in curing his patient, than another of equal information on medical science, but careless and negligent of his behavior and appearance.

I cannot advise that you always should carry about with you an air, and, indeed, a habit of boasting, and an appearance of self-sufficiency, which, wherever they are observed, generally are taken to be signs of weakness. But that which you do know, I would have you conscious of knowing, so that you may be en

abled to speak, with due boldness and decision, on all proper occasions.

But, alas! gentlemen, I fear I am uselessly consuming your time and exhausting your patience. I shall close this letter, therefore, by recommending you to observe the rules of conduct laid down by your Professor of the Institutes on commencement day. Should you remember and follow out the plan he then pointed out, you will become what I desire ardently that you should become, useful and successful in your calling, which will redound not only to your own honor and profit, but to the credit of your Alma Mater.

Before I close this letter, pray allow me to cite for your perusal a passage from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, p. 139, who, if you imitate him in the sentiments and conduct here pointed out, will be your sufficient model.

"I feel not in me," says Sir Thomas Browne, "those sordid and unchristian desires of my profession; I do not secretly implore and wish for plagues, rejoice at famines, revolve ephemerides and almanacks, in expectation of malignant aspects, fatal conjunctions, and eclipses: I rejoice not at unwholesome springs, or unseasonable winters; my prayer goes with the husbandman's; I desire everything in its proper season, that neither men nor the times be put out of temper. Let me be sick myself, if sometimes the malady of my patient be not a disease unto me. I desire rather to cure his infirmities than my own necessities: where I do him no good methinks it is scarce honest gain; though I confess it is but the worthy salary of our well intended endeavors. I am not only ashamed, but heartily sorry, that besides death there are diseases incurable; yet not for my own sake, or that they be beyond my art, but for the general cause and sake of humanity, whose common cause I apprehend as mine own." Farewell. C. D. M.

LETTER III.

SEX.

You may remember that in lectures at the college, I very frequently repeated that the ovary of the female gives to her the sexual character, and that as the interior and active tissue of the ovary, is the part which Ch. Ernest von Baer calls the lager or stroma, so that very lager or stroma is the SEX itself.

You might, perhaps, at first hearing this dogma, feel disposed to reject it as too concise an expression of the multitudinous and diversified characteristics of the sexual nature-but I hope a careful examination of the matter may induce you to coincide with me in opinion.

The sexual office is designed to reproduce the material forms and faculties of a genus or species; and this is not done save by the production of a germ, which at least, in all the Zoological series, is found within an ovum, which, in plain English, is an egg. Omne vivum ex ovo, is a true saying.

An ovum then is an egg-which is not to be considered as a germ, but as a thing containing a germ and the material or pabulum for the early stages of the development of that germ.

An egg is a yelk-ball-which in some instances is invested with a quantity of albumen or white, and in some cases is not accompanied with any deposit of that sort.

The yelk-ball is a vitellus-and consists of a multitude of corpuscles and granules, and punctiform bodies and small globules of oil swimming in a clear delicate fluid, inclosed by a delicate anhistous membrane, the vitellary membrane. In most cases yelk is of a yellow hue, in some it is red or greenish, &c.

If you break open a yelk, whether of the humming bird or the ostrich, of the elephant or the mare, the rabbit or the earthworm, the shad, the minnow, or the whale, you will find it to consist of corpuscles, granules, and puncta, with oil globules and the clear fluid.

If the egg has not been subjected to fecundation, as it cannot