These young men are to have some very serious vital facts to deal with.  I will mention a few of them.

Every other resident adult you meet in these streets is or will be more or less tuberculous.  This is not an extravagant estimate, as very nearly one third of the deaths of adults in Boston last year were from phthisis.  If the relative number is less in our other northern cities, it is probably in a great measure because they are more unhealthy; that is, they have as much, or nearly as much, consumption, but they have more fevers or other fatal diseases.

These heavy-eyed men with the alcoholized brains, these pallid youths with the nicotized optic ganglia and thinking-marrows brown as their own meerschaums, of whom you meet too many,—­will ask all your wisdom to deal with their poisoned nerves and their enfeebled wills.

Nearly seventeen hundred children under five years of age died last year in this city.  A poor human article, no doubt, in many cases, still, worth an attempt to save them, especially when we remember the effect of Dr. Clarke’s suggestion at the Dublin Hospital, by which some twenty-five or thirty thousand children’s lives have probably been saved in a single city.

Again, the complaint is often heard that the native population is not increasing so rapidly as in former generations.  The breeding and nursing period of American women is one of peculiar delicacy and frequent infirmity.  Many of them must require a considerable interval between the reproductive efforts, to repair damages and regain strength.  This matter is not to be decided by an appeal to unschooled nature.  It is the same question as that of the deformed pelvis,—­one of degree.  The facts of mal-vitalization are as much to be attended to as those of mal-formation.  If the woman with a twisted pelvis is to be considered an exempt, the woman with a defective organization should be recognized as belonging to the invalid corps.  We shudder to hear what is alleged as to the prevalence of criminal practices; if back of these there can be shown organic incapacity or overtaxing of too limited powers, the facts belong to the province of the practical physician, as well as of the moralist and the legislator, and require his gravest consideration.

Take the important question of bleeding.  Is venesection done with forever?  Six years ago it was said here in an introductory Lecture that it would doubtless come back again sooner or later.  A fortnight ago I found myself in the cars with one of the most sensible and esteemed practitioners in New England.  He took out his wallet and showed me two lancets, which he carried with him; he had never given up their use.  This is a point you will have to consider.

Or, to mention one out of many questionable remedies, shall you give Veratrum Viride in fevers and inflammations?  It makes the pulse slower in these affections.  Then the presumption would naturally be that it does harm.  The caution with reference to it on this ground was long ago recorded in the Lecture above referred to.  See what Dr. John Hughes Bennett says of it in the recent edition of his work on Medicine.  Nothing but the most careful clinical experience can settle this and such points of treatment.