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WE, the authors, working together in the same professional field, encountering the same new problems, and acquiring the same fresh experience, have united our heads, our hands, and our hearts in an attempt to make "The Book on the Physician Himself" more worthy of the numerous commendations it has received and of still greater benefit to those who follow its teachings.

In fulfilling this task we have laid our hands on almost every paragraph in it, and introduced so many new facts and added so much fresh material-here, there, and everywhere-that we have almost given the whole book a new birth.

To distinguish between this and the older editions we have named this THE TWENTIETH CENTURY EDITION.

We beg you to judge it, good reader, not by opening it here and there, nor by glancing at detached paragraphs, but to study its pages from cover to cover, and thus qualify yourself to weigh correctly its teachings, which we would fain have to harmonize with the advice given by the Bishop of Lonsdale to those who came to him enquiring the way to heaven: "Turn to the right, then go straight forward."

D. W. C.

W. T. C.

1308 NORTH CHARLES STREET,

BALTIMORE, MD.

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OVERY Medical Man discovers sooner or later that The Practice of Medicine has two sides: A Greater Scientific Side, and a Lesser, but important, Personal Side, and that to fight the battles of life successfully it is as necessary for even the most scientific physician to possess a certain amount of professional tact and business sagacity as it is for a ship to have a rudder. There are gentlemen in the ranks of our profession who are perfectly acquainted with all the scientific aspects of medicine, and can tell you what to do for almost every ailment that afflicts humanity, who, nevertheless, after earnest trial, have failed to achieve reputation or acquire practice simply because they are deficient on the personal side, and lack the professional tact and business sagacity that would make their other qualities successful; and there is nothing more pitiful than to see a worthy aspirant, deficient in these respects, waiting year after year for practice, and a consequent sphere of professional usefulness, that never come.

Were any such graduate to ask us: "How can I conduct myself in the profession, and what honorable and legitimate personal means shall I add to my scientific knowledge and book-learning in order to make my success in the great professional struggle more certain, more rapid, and more complete?" we should offer him the following suggestions:

First, last, and in the midst of all, you should, as a man

and as a physician, found your expectations of success on your personal and scientific qualifications, and keep whatever is honest, whatever is true, whatever is just, and whatever is pure, foremost in your mind, and be governed by it. If you do not, you will not deserve to succeed in the honorable profession of medicine, and no honest man can wish you success.

Beware of mistakes at the outset. Whether, after graduation, you commence to practice without any intermediate course, or wisely strive further to prepare and refine and broaden yourself for your life's work by a limited term of service as resident physician or clinical assistant in some hospital, or by taking a systematic course in diagnosing, prescribing, and manipulating at some post-graduate school in one of our own great cities, or endeavor to obtain a more complete scientific knowledge of what is known to the profession by making a journey to the hospitals and clinics of London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, or Leipzig, that your eyes may see the work, and that your ears may drink in some of the oxygen of lofty science from these great teachers while your mind is still flexible, is a matter of taste, money, time, and opportunity; but, whenever and wherever you attempt to start private practice, you should, above all else, be seriously in earnest and strive to begin right, and, by the aid of tireless industry and determination, to enter promptly on the road to success; for, unless you gain popular favor by a display of ability, acquire a favorable reputation, and build up a fair practice in your first six or eight years, the probabilities are that you never will. In the battle of life it is not simply the events of school-days and college hours, but the after-performances in the broader arena of life that prove the physician:

Life is a sheet of paper, white,
Whereon each man of us may write

His word or two, and then comes night.

Beware of entangling alliances. It is, as a rule, better not

to enter into partnership with other physicians. Partners are usually not equally matched in 'industry, capacity for work, tact, temperament, and other qualities indispensable to an intimate and congenial fellowship, and are not equally esteemed by the public. Hence such professional alliances do not generally prove either as beneficial or satisfactory as expected, and consequently partnerships rarely continue long. Above all else, be slow to ally yourself with this or that selfish physician as assistant or junior partner, you to do the drudgery, or on any other unequal terms. The sooner you learn to depend on yourself, the better. Julius Cæsar said: "I had rather be the first man in a village than the second man in a great city" :—

The fame that a man wins himself is best;
That, he may call his own.

Unless you have the locality and your place of residence already selected, you may find it the most difficult problem of your life, with our whole continent and its millions and millions of people before you, accurately to balance and weigh the advantages and the disadvantages of this, that, or the other nook, corner, or opening. Whether to locate in your own town, among the generation you have grown up with, and where everybody knows all about you and your pedigree from the cradle up, or in a different or distant part; in a populous city or a moderate-sized town, in a village or a rural district; in the East or the West, the North or the South of our widespread land, is truly a puzzling puzzle that is apt to be the turning-point in your life.

Many big blunders are made at the outset by locating in the wrong place; therefore take care to:

Look before you leap,

give the subject your very best thought, and decide with great care, and only after duly considering your own qualities and

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