By all means let our library secure a good representation of the literature of Homoeopathy before it leaves us its “sorrowful regrets” and migrates with its sugar of milk pellets, which have taken the place of the old pilulae micae panis, to Alaska, to “Nova Zembla, or the Lord knows where.”

What shall I say in this presence of the duties of a Librarian?  Where have they ever been better performed than in our own public city library, where the late Mr. Jewett and the living Mr. Winsor have shown us what a librarian ought to be,—­the organizing head, the vigilant guardian, the seeker’s index, the scholar’s counsellor?  His work is not merely that of administration, manifold and laborious as its duties are.  He must have a quick intelligence and a retentive memory.  He is a public carrier of knowledge in its germs.  His office is like that which naturalists attribute to the bumble-bee,—­he lays up little honey for himself, but he conveys the fertilizing pollen from flower to flower.

Our undertaking, just completed,—­and just begun—­has come at the right time, not a day too soon.  Our practitioners need a library like this, for with all their skill and devotion there is too little genuine erudition, such as a liberal profession ought to be able to claim for many of its members.  In reading the recent obituary notices of the late Dr. Geddings of South Carolina, I recalled what our lamented friend Dr. Coale used to tell me of his learning and accomplishments, and I could not help reflecting how few such medical scholars we had to show in Boston or New England.  We must clear up this unilluminated atmosphere, and here,—­here is the true electric light which will irradiate its darkness.

The public will catch the rays reflected from the same source of light, and it needs instruction on the great subjects of health and disease,—­needs it sadly.  It is preyed upon by every kind of imposition almost without hindrance.  Its ignorance and prejudices react upon the profession to the great injury of both.  The jealous feeling, for instance, with regard to such provisions for the study of anatomy as are sanctioned by the laws in this State and carried out with strict regard to those laws, threatens the welfare, if not the existence of institutions for medical instruction wherever it is not held in check by enlightened intelligence.  And on the other hand the profession has just been startled by a verdict against a physician, ruinous in its amount,—­enough to drive many a hard-working young practitioner out of house and home,—­a verdict which leads to the fear that suits for malpractice may take the place of the panel game and child-stealing as a means of extorting money.  If the profession in this State, which claims a high standard of civilization, is to be crushed and ground beneath the upper millstone of the dearth of educational advantages and the lower millstone of ruinous penalties for what the ignorant ignorantly shall decide to be ignorance, all I can say is