* * * * *

WHAT’S IN A NAME?—­The St. James’s Gazette says:—­“There are forty-seven divorces in the United States for every one in the United Kingdom.”  Evidently “United” is something more than anagrammatically identical with “Untied.”

* * * * *

“GRAY’S ELEGY” AMENDED.

["I have often thought that GRAY’s Elegy was defective in having no verse commemorative of the sequestered and unsophisticated philanthropy of the village doctor.”—­Sir James Crichton-Browne at the Yorkshire College, Leeds.]

  And one lies here of whom the scoffer said,
    He did his best the green churchyard to fill;
  None ever looks upon his lowly bed,
    Without the recollection of a pill.

  He lived sequestered, and he died unknown,
    A truly unsophisticated man;
  A medicine-glass adorns his humble stone,
    And thus the epitaph they graved him ran: 

  “Here Doctor BOLUS lies, to dose no more;
    His charge was moderate, but quite enough: 
  Death left a last prescription at the door,
    And then the doctor had his ‘Quantum suff.’”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “AFTER YOU!”

“HE BELIEVED THAT EVERYONE OF THEM WOULD PREFER THAT SOMEONE ELSE SHOULD HOLD THAT HIGH AND HONOURABLE OFFICE.”—­SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH at Stockton-on-Tees.]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  WATER V. WINE.  “HOLD!  ENOUGH!”]

* * * * *

HARRYING OUR HAKIMS.

    [A medical journal suggests that all candidates for Medical
    Degrees should be required to give proof of good handwriting,
    in order to put an end to indistinct prescriptions.]

A few additional requirements, we believe, have been under consideration, of which the following are a sample:—­

All candidates for the M.B.  Degree to be able to count up to fifty.  Candidates who are more than fifty not to count.

Nobody to become a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons until he has mastered Simple Addition and Compound Fractures.

Members of the Royal College of Physicians will henceforth be expected to know their Weights (with boots off) and Measures (round the waist).  Troy weight only.  “Scruples” not allowed.  Good knowledge of Multiplication Table indispensable for dispensers.

No candidate to be accepted for a Degree unless he either has a good “bedside manner,” or undertakes to develop one as soon as possible.

Any candidate to be at once ploughed unless he can answer all the following questions:—­

1.  What would you do if asked to hold a consultation with a practitioner whom you have every reason to suppose an incapable quack?

2.  If a good paying patient, suffering from no ailment whatever, called you in with a view to getting a week’s holiday at the seaside by medical orders, how would you reconcile a desire to oblige that pardonable weakness with a strict regard for veracity?