Some of you will probably be more or less troubled by the pretensions of that parody of mediaeval theology which finds its dogma of hereditary depravity in the doctrine of psora, its miracle of transubstantiation in the mystery of its triturations and dilutions, its church in the people who have mistaken their century, and its priests in those who have mistaken their calling.  You can do little with persons who are disposed to accept these curious medical superstitions.  The saturation-point of individual minds with reference to evidence, and especially medical evidence, differs, and must always continue to differ, very widely.  There are those whose minds are satisfied with the decillionth dilution of a scientific proof.  No wonder they believe in the efficacy of a similar attenuation of bryony or pulsatilla.  You have no fulcrum you can rest upon to lift an error out of such minds as these, often highly endowed with knowledge and talent, sometimes with genius, but commonly richer in the imaginative than the observing and reasoning faculties.

Let me return once more to the young graduate.  Your relations to your professional brethren may be a source of lifelong happiness and growth in knowledge and character, or they may make you wretched and end by leaving you isolated from those who should be your friends and counsellors.  The life of a physician becomes ignoble when he suffers himself to feed on petty jealousies and sours his temper in perpetual quarrels.  You will be liable to meet an uncomfortable man here and there in the profession,—­one who is so fond of being in hot water that it is a wonder all the albumen in his body is not coagulated.  There are common barrators among doctors as there are among lawyers,—­stirrers up of strife under one pretext and another, but in reality because they like it.  They are their own worst enemies, and do themselves a mischief each time they assail their neighbors.  In my student days I remember a good deal of this Donnybrook-Fair style of quarrelling, more especially in Paris, where some of the noted surgeons were always at loggerheads, and in one of our lively Western cities.  Soon after I had set up an office, I had a trifling experience which may serve to point a moral in this direction.  I had placed a lamp behind the glass in the entry to indicate to the passer-by where relief from all curable infirmities was to be sought and found.  Its brilliancy attracted the attention of a devious youth, who dashed his fist through the glass and upset my modest luminary.  All he got by his vivacious assault was that he left portions of integument from his knuckles upon the glass, had a lame hand, was very easily identified, and had to pay the glazier’s bill.  The moral is that, if the brilliancy of another’s reputation excites your belligerent instincts, it is not worth your while to strike at it, without calculating which of you is likely to suffer most, if you do.