they too often manage to hide their deformities as with a veil from all but the few who know their true characters, by assuming the dress and manners of gentlemen. Now, if genteel dress, polished manners, and cultured address can do so much for such unworthy specimens of mankind, how much greater influence must appearance, manners, and a guarded tongue exert for those who are truly gentlemen and members of an honorable profession!

Nevertheless, do not, under any plea, be a leader or patronizer of loud or frivolous fashion, as though your egotism and love of sporty clothes had overshadowed all else; avoid glaring neckties, flashy breastpins, loud watch-seals, brilliant rings, fancy canes, perfumes, attitudinizing, and all other peculiarities in dress or actions that indicate overweening self-conceit, or a desire to be considered a fop of fashion or a butterfly

swell:

Cupid, have mercy!

Fops, dudes, and dandies may be admired at the time for posturing, but they are not usually chosen by discerning persons seeking a guardian for their health.

Even though you be ever so poor, let your garb show genteel poverty, for as a physician your dress, manners, and bearing should all agree with your noble and dignified calling, for neglect of neatness of dress and want of polite manners might cause you to be criticised or shunned. You will sometimes see little Dr. Tact, a vastly inferior man, whose scientific capital is very limited, and cranium comparatively empty, and intellectually near-sighted, who always sat on the back benches at college, and was never accused of having an excess of brains, succeed in getting extensive and lucrative practice, and paying heavy bills for horseshoes, almost entirely by attention to the outer trappings and affability of manner; while Dr. Fullhead, Dr. Betterman, and Dr. Talent, professionally more able and personally more worthy, will have but little need of bell-knobs

at their doors, and never learn the cost of carriages and the price of horse-feed, or of bonds and stocks, by reason of defects in these apparently unimportant matters. Alas!

Veneering often outshines the solid wood.

Clean hands, well-shaved face or neatly-trimmed beard, unsoiled shirt and collar, unimpeachable hat, polished boots, spotless cuffs, well-fitting gloves; fashionable, well-made clothing, of fine texture; cane, sun-umbrella, neat office-jacket, etc. -all relate to personal hygiene-severally indicate gentility and self-respect, and impart to their possessor a pleasurable consciousness of being well dressed and presentable:—

I am not a handsome man, but my make-up doth lend me an
air of respectability.

The majority of people will employ a physician with genteel appearance and manners, of equal or even inferior talent, more readily than a slovenly, rough-bearded one; they will also accord to him more confidence, and expect from and willingly pay to him larger bills.

Make your profession the chief object of your life, and avoid extraneous pursuits and a multiplicity of callings, especially such as would interfere with your work as a physician, or give you a distaste for the profession, or cause you to resume its duties with a feeling of irksomeness. Divorce medicine from all other vocations, however important, respectable, or lucrative, from the drug business, preaching, speculating in petroleum or salt; being partner in a saw-mill, owner of a drygoods store, or dealing in cattle, or horses; nor be equally interested in the practice of medicine and in school-teaching, or in pushing the jack-plane, or following the plow; giving public readings or preaching on subjects not connected with medicine; scribbling poetry; fiddling or singing at concerts; or base-ball playing, rowing-matches, public amateur photographing, etc., because medicine is a lofty intellectual pursuit,

and the public cannot appreciate you or any one else in two dissimilar characters or incompatible callings: half-physician and half-druggist, or three-eighths physician and five-eighths politician, or one-third physician and two-thirds sportsman, or other similar mixture of incongruities, for it is in medicine as in religion:

Ye cannot serve two masters.

Of course, if you choose to change off and quit medicine for any other occupation it is legitimate to do so; but it is better to keep your eye and your mind on one subject and be a whole one thing or another, for no man can attain a high degree of success in any calling unless his whole heart is in it.

Although it may seem paradoxical, even reputation as a surgeon or as a specialist of any kind militates against reputation in other departments of medicine. The public believe that a surgeon, with his sharp saws and thirsty knives, is happier in using them than in trying to save the limb or in doing anything else, and delights in spilling blood, and is good only for lopping off limbs, or performing other cutting operations, and that a specialist is good solely for his specialty, just as a preacher is for preaching.

Hesitate even to take such offices as vaccine physician, coroner, dispensary physician, sanitary inspector, etc., in a section where you expect to practice in future, more especially if you must have bar-room buffoons or political demagogues for official bed-fellows, or moral lepers or notorious idiots for employers or companions:

Jack in office is a great man.

All such functions tend to dwarf one's ultimate progress, and sometimes create a low-grade reputation that it is hard to outlive. To many people, taking such offices looks somewhat like a confession of impecuniosity or of inferiority, and creates an adverse impression that cannot be overcome for years. No!

if you have any merit at all, and an open field, private practice industriously followed, with nothing else on hand to consume your time or harass your mind, will lead by better and pleasanter roads to greater success.

These last remarks are, also, to a certain extent, true of the position of resident physician or assistant physician to hospitals, infirmaries, lunatic asylums, almshouses, reformatory or penal institutions; or in the army, or on board emigrant or naval vessels, or traveling for manufacturing druggists, where employment in a snug or easy job, at a petty salary and the comforts of a home, for a few of his most precious years, have caused many a physician fully qualified for success as a practitioner to throw away the best days of his life, and let slip opportunities that could never be recalled:

Too soon, too soon.

The noon will be the afternoon;

Too soon to-day will be yesterday.

Bear in mind that such positions can never be depended on longer than those in power find it to their interest to change. If you feel yourself to be skilled in the art of imparting knowledge, and ever become a teacher of medicine in a college, with a choice of branch, instead of taking Physiology, Materia Medica, Jurisprudence, Hygiene, or other non-personal subjects, take care to aim for a practical chair, in the direction of your natural inclination and greatest ability, one that relates directly to the sick, and that is likely to increase your skill and get you special work to do or otherwise advance your reputation and your private practice.

The life and duties of the unhampered physician are much more congenial to many highly qualified physicians :

With much to do, and more to think of,

than the additional labors, loss of time, and increased expenditure of nerve-force required of the teacher in a medical college.

Besides, some men are a greater success striving as individuals, while others are made more successful by the assistance of combinations. Measure yourself closely and ponder these things well before you aspire to the honors and the burdens of a professorship.

We are aware that the title of "Professor" aids in giving its possessor a certain degree of prestige with the public, and thousands of people believe that The Professor is necessarily far superior in knowledge and skill to his next-door neighbor "The Doctor"; yet we doubt whether a professorship ever pays three in twenty of those who essay it.

You may also ask the question: Shall I adopt a specialty? Would it pay me to do so?

The adoption of a specialty, to the exclusion of other varieties of practice, is successful with but a few of those who attempt it. It should never be undertaken without first studying the whole profession and attaining a few years' experience among the people as a general practitioner.

A successful specialist has many advantages over the hurly-burly life of the general practitioner: He is independent of general practice. He has short hours and is seldom or never called out at night. He can escape the expenses of horses, carriages, stables, and drivers. His Sundays are his own if he chooses. His fees are always good, sometimes fat. He can tell his terms and arrange about the payment of his fees at the beginning of each case, and usually gets them cash, and after a much easier life he generally dies a great deal better off pecuniarily than the general practitioner.

On the other hand, the specialist must be better equipped in instruments, etc., and more dextrous and masterful in their use and also more concise in the details of treatment; should possess a faultless manner and must foster his practice more carefully; in other words, if you put all your eggs in one special basket you must watch that basket much more closely.