ing-club's headquarters,—with a vile smell of stale cigars or pipes, nor a sportsman's rest nor a loafing room for the idle, the dissipated, and the unemployed; nor a family parlor, nor a social meeting-place of any kind; but the offices of an earnest, working, scientific physician, who has a library, takes the journals, and makes full use of the instruments of precision, and the various methods that science has devised for doing different kinds of medical and surgical work, and regards his office as the twin sister to the sick-room.

Take particular care, however, to avoid making a quackish display of instruments and tools, and keep from sight such inappropriate and repulsive objects as catheters, syringes, stomach-pumps, obstetrical forceps, splints, trusses, amputating knives, skeletons, grinning skulls, jars of amputated extremities, tumors, manikins, the unripe fruit of the uterus, etc. Also avoid such chilling or coarse habits as keeping vaginal specula or human bones on your desk for ornaments or paperweights:

A shivering Raw-Head and Bloody-Bones display.

But while you should make no undue exhibition of books, surgical instruments, etc., it is not unprofessional to have about you-not for display, or designedly made conspicuous, but for ready and actual use-your outfit: microscope, stethoscope, laryngoscope, ophthalmoscope, spirit-lamp, testtubes, reagents for testing specimens, and other modern aids to precision in diagnosis, with the various other scientific instruments you make use of in treatment; also to ornament your office with diplomas, certificates of society membership, potted or cut flowers or growing plants or vines, fine etchings, or photographs of your own professional friends or teachers. A galaxy of small pictures of medical celebrities-Hippocrates, Galen, Harvey, Gross, Pasteur, or whomever else you especially admire-may be grouped on the office walls by the

dozens or hundreds. Busts or statues are also in excellent taste, and are interesting to all, also academical prizes, professional relics, keepsakes, mementoes, medals, or anything else that tells of your mental or physical prowess in earlier days, or is especially associated with your medical studies and career. But, unless it be a few artistic ornaments or works of art, it is better to limit such articles to those that relate to you as a student or pertain to you or your vocation as a physician. A surgical chair, a gynecological table, or both are now seen in almost every office, and in good hands, is apt to pay for itself many times a year.

In buying your office-outfit see that the walls and floors are tastefully covered. Articles of furniture should be few in number, but good, including a small and-if means will admit -handsome book-case, with writing-table and chairs to correspond. Have comfortable chairs for your patients' use, and one so arranged that they may sit in a good light during examination; but beware of stocking yourself with novelties and instruments that will probably go out of fashion or rust or spoil before you will need them. It is prudent not to invest heavily at first, but you must have the necessary every-day instruments which the urgency of certain cases will not give you time to go for when occasion arises for their use, and get others only when you have a use for them. Bear in mind that soft-rubber goods, and soft goods generally, deteriorate in keeping and finally become worthless.

A neat case of well-labeled and well-corked medicines is of great use and not unornamental; so also are dictionaries, encyclopedias, and lexicons for ready reference; also a nonstriking time-piece to notify the time quietly to physician and patient by its tick-tock, tick-tock. Also, find a place for a neat looking-glass, or mirror; but display no miniature museum of sharks' heads, stuffed alligators, tortoise-shells, impaled butterflies, ships, steam-boats, mummies, snakes, fossils, stuffed

birds, lizards, crocodiles, tape-worms, devil-fish, ostrich-eggs, hornets' nests, or anything else that will advertise you in any light other than that of a cultivated physician. It will, to the thinking portion of the public, seem very much more appropriate for you, as a physician, to be jubilant over a restored patient or a useful medical discovery than to be ecstatic over a stuffed flying-fish, a rare shell, or an Egyptian mummy. If you have a natural love for such incongruous things, or are a bird- or dog- fancier or a bug-hunter, at least keep the fact private, and keep your specimens out of sight of the public, and endeavor to lead patients to think of you solely as an earnest, scientific physician.

Public opinion is the supreme court. You will be more esteemed by patients who call at your office, for any purpose, if they find you engaged in your professional duties and studies, than if playing music, making toy steam-boats, entertaining loungers, or occupied in other non-professional or trivial pursuits; even reading the newspapers, smoking, etc., at times proper for study and business, have an ill effect on public opinion, which is the creator, the source of all reputation, whether good or bad, and should be respected; for a good reputation is a large, a very large, yea one of the chief parts of a physician's capital.

It is your duty, as well as to your interest, to display no political or religious emblems, pictures, mottoes, etc., about your office, because these relate to your personal sentiments. Being emphatically a public man, and your office being a public place, not for any special class, but for every faith and party, no matter what shade of partisan or sectarian articles you may display, they will surely be repugnant to some, for :

On life's stormy ocean diversely we sail,

and in this and all other matters fairly open to criticism it is a wise maxim to respect public opinion and let your office, at

least, be colorless in partisan affairs. Difference in religion or politics has often either prevented the employment of physicians or caused their dismissal, and the obtrusion of unpopular political or religious views has marred the prospects of many a physician; besides, what is popular to-day may be unpopular to-morrow; therefore, keep your heart and your office open to all parties, classes, and creeds. This will recommend you equally to all.

Establish a regular professional and business policy at the beginning of your career. Be at your post as punctually as possible, and have your office well heated in winter and kept cool in summer, lighted regularly every evening at the proper hour, your door-bell answered promptly, professional messages entered on the slate by the person in charge, and in all other respects show punctuality, system, and steadiness of purpose. You will find that absence from your office when needed, particularly if away for sport or pleasure, is a fruitful source of loss of practice; if, on the contrary, you are found when wanted, people will credit you with industry, regularity, and long-winded determination to succeed in your profession, which cannot fail to advertise you and bring you patronage.

Do not allow the ladies of the family to lounge about your office, reading your books, answering the office-bell, etc., lest it repel certain kinds of desirable patients. Both messengers and patients would rather meet you or your servant than ladies; nor let them have to meet two or three office-idlers face to face. Whenever this or that "friend" begins to come in for that purpose, go to see a patient or go out on business to get rid of him, and thus break it up. You should respect public opinion in these and in all other matters justly open to criticism.

Still more important to success will be the morals of the companions you make in your early career; in fact, all through life a physician is judged by the company he keeps. Avoid associating with aimless idlers and those who bear a

merited stigma, or cursed with incurable faults, or are notoriously deficient, or whose hopes and ambitions have been blighted or wrecked by intemperance or their good names otherwise tarnished by their own misconduct. On the contrary, let your associations be, as far as possible, with professional brethren of solid character and other people of genuine worth :

Appetite grows by what it feeds on.

Prefer to spend your unoccupied time in your office with standard medical works and medical journals, or in getting keenness, culture, and development of your better parts by rational conversation with high-minded people, or with other physicians, or at medical meetings, or at this or that medical library, or in walking the hospitals, or attending lectures, instead of loitering around drug-stores, hotel-bars, saloons:The fool's paradise,

club-rooms, cigar-stores, billiard-parlors, barber-shops, or corner-groceries, with aimless fellows, who love doing nothing, frivolity, and dissipation; or to take such persons riding around in your carriage, or to the horse-racing, or to join the throng at the base-ball game, or going bicycling with them. No one ever conceives a more exalted opinion of a professional man by fraternizing with him at such unedifying places or seeing him in such company:—

Of all the arts, the art of sinking is the most certain of success.

As a further, but minor, aid to successful progress, be courteous to all kinds of people with whom duty or accident brings you in contact; but while you treat all men as brothers and all women as sisters, beware of talking too freely, and do not handshake and harmonize with the coarse, ignorant, and unappreciative indiscriminately, for undue familiarity shears the thoughtless physician of both influence and prestige.