lacking such instinct the highest measure of success in practice is never attained.

Dr. Anther in "The Son of Royal Langbrith," and Cable's "Dr. Sevier" are of the same type. Dr. Anther was the loyal lover of Royal Langbrith's widow. He deeply resented the tyranny which she had secretly endured from her late husband but consciousness of the possible imputation of selfish motives led him to refrain from communicating to her coxcomb of a son, the true facts concerning the unworthy parent whom he had ignorantly idealized. At the widow's request he participates in a public ceremony in the father's honor, not, however, without previously apprising the orators of the true character of the one they were to eulogize, his own moral standards showing out in this matter above those of his brethren of the law and the ministry upon whom the duty of eulogists devolved.

His considerate and fatherly treatment of the daughter of the opium habitué is one of the finest passages in the book. "It's a little disappointing when we've got him so far along, that's all. But it is not a thing to discourage." "He set the bottle aside." "I'll bring it to him and have a talk with him." "Oh, do!" the girl said, back in her gayety again, "your talks do him more good than medicine."

On the whole the picture drawn by Howells of this rugged and honest character is satisfactory. "He kept his precepts for himself, his practices for his patient," ate recklessly and preferred unwholesome things, was tenderly sympathetic toward the young, was moved deeply by resentment, but never erred on the unjust or unfeeling side and through praiseworthy motives. renounced a lifetime's dream of happiness through considerations of expediency.

Cable's Dr. Sevier, whose inner heart was all of flesh but whose demands for the rectitude of mankind pointed out like the muzzle of a cannon through the embrasures of his virtues, waged active war against disease. "To fight; to stifle; to cut down; to uproot; to overwhelm; these were his springs of action. To demolish evil seemed the highest of aims." Later years and a better self-knowledge taught him that to do good was still finer and better.

These sentiments have a familiar ring. Who, just out of

college but feels himself called upon to denounce errors, ecclesiastical, ethical, medical; how he fares forth, pinning his faith to the dictates of his freshly acquired science and intolerant of the acceptance of any dogma not founded upon that which is demonstrable. He must have the truth then, would prove all things, must have a reason for the faith within. As time goes on, however, such demonstration grows less and less important. He admits his neighbor's right to opinions, and if not concurring, concerns himself little therewith. His public duty to call the sinner to repentance becomes less and less obvious.

The possibilities that lie in the operation of trephining have been little considered by the novelist, and not in a fashion to indicate any depth of study as to the conditions for which such an operation may be undertaken. Balzac in Catherine de Medici, draws a striking picture of Paré, his courage, strength of character, and resourcefulness. In the greatest emergency of his life, however, his judgment seems to have been overborne and we are left in doubt as to just what motives actuated him in his failure to operate upon a supposed cerebral abscess in the case of the young King, Francis II.

Mary Mapes Dodge in a child's story, "Hans Brinker," introduces Dr. Brockman, the most famous surgeon in Holland, in appearance irritable and intolerant, but self-sacrificing and modest at heart as we of a humbler specialty know great surgeons to be. Dr. Brockman discovers the similarity between the case of Hans' father and one operated upon in a highly successful manner by a contemporary. "Did the man live?" asked the assistant respectfully. "I believe he died, but why not fix your mind on the grand features of the case.' "You have," said the assistant, "other engagements to-day; three legs in Amsterdam, you remember, and an eye in Brok, and that tumor up the canal." "The tumor can wait," said the doctor reflectively. It did wait, the operation was performed, and fortunately, the patient refused to follow the precedent set by the case cited, living as a testimonial to the skill of the great operator and to consume large quantities of his good victuals and wine, thereby liberally confirming the well known reputation of the scowling surgeon for practical philanthropy.

One's sympathies are strongly enlisted for the unfortunate New

England quack of the Pratt Portraits. His mother, Mis' Bennett, came from an "uncommon smart family, the Pratts of Dunbridge," and it was regarded a real “eddication " to Anson to be the son of such a woman. She had an ill defined notion that doctrine and docterin' had more similarity than that of mere sound and gave her son to homeopathy and to the people in imitation of Luther who defied the priests who were "keeping religious docterin' all to themselves." Homeopathy was then just coming into vogue. Among New England housewives who liked to feel themselves equal to any emergency the little wooden cases of bottles filled with palatable remedies were welcome possessions.

Anson, brought up to the spectacle trade, permitted himself to take up homeopathy on his mother's instigation. It seemed strange to the neighbors that he should "suddenly pick up and know so much 'bout people's insides, but they accepted the dispensation on the comfortable theory that homeopathy meant homemade or something of the kind."

Poor Anson was his own worst dupe. He, like Dr. Breen, had always thought of saving life, not losing it, and confronted by a severe case of pneumonia called consultation too late. He stood out for the principles of his "school" for a time but the denunciation of Dr. Morse pierced his very soul. The patient died and from that moment he renounced practice, gave up matrimonial aspirations, took upon himself the care of his dead client's family, lived a saintly life, educated in medicine his patient's son, and eventually died from a malignant disease for which the young surgeon's knife had been used unsuccessfully. He lived a life of self-denial and expiated his fault, meriting the proud distinction conveyed in the eulogistic words of Dr. Morse: should feel it an honor if you would shake hands with me." Howells' Dr. Breen, laboring under the double handicap of homeopathy and femininity, had chosen the work in the intention of giving her life to it in the spirit in which other women enter convents or go out to heathen lands. A disappointment in love led her to belive that she had put away the hopes and pleasures to which a young girl aspires, failing to realize that she could not escape from being a woman by becoming a physician. She finds herself at the outset of her professional career unexpectedly in the medical relation to a giddy guest, a neuropathic consump

"I

tive of flirtatious instincts. Her consultation with Dr. Mulbridge over the case of the guest who was really ill and now wanted a doctor, resulting in failure to discover a basis for joint medical care, she abdicates the physician's prerogative and assumes that of nurse. In that capacity she engages the affections of Dr. Mulbridge, who though forceful and usually discreet, fails dismally in love making. His impression that the same vigorous tactics will obtain to win the woman as have been of service in combatting the vagaries of impressionable invalids, receives as it should, a rude shock (any other doctor almost, could have told him better) and the offer of renunciation of the true medical faith in order to win her favor, with his consignment of the State Medical Association to the devil, is a sad confession of weakness in a virile man, caught in love and oblivious to folly.

Dr. Breen, with rare adjustment to a more congenial ordering of things, promptly announces her attachment to a previously rejected suitor, precipitates herself into a pair of coat-sleeved arms open to encircle her and surrenders to a dominating spirit.

Dear old Doctor Sangrado, of Gil Blas, who had acquired a great reputation with the public by a pomp of words, a solemn air and some lucky cures, was the original hydrotherapeutist. Health consisting in his view in the humectation and suppleness of the parts, he advised water in great abundance as the "universal menstruum that dissolves all kinds of salt." He insisted that in small amounts it served only to disentangle the particles of the bile and give them more activity; whereas they should be drowned in a copious dilution. Like some other sanitarians who trust much to water in the treatment of disease, he recommended a vegetable diet and did not approve of eating a bellyful, even of that. To deny the stomach things that were palatable, to bleed and to drench with water constituted the principles of his practice which both in his own view and that of his ambitious student, Gil Blas, was so uniform in results as to inspire the reflection of the latter; "I take heaven to witness that I follow your method with the utmost exactness, yet nevertheless every one of my patients leaves me in the lurch. It looks as if they took a pleasure in dying merely to bring my practice into discredit. This very day I met two of them going to their long home." To which Dr. Sangrado replied that if he were not so sure of the principles

on which he proceeded, he should think his remedies pernicious but having written a book extolling frequent bleeding and aqueous draughts, he would not be willing to change methods and deny his own work.

The shady side of the physician's life is depicted in Zola's "Dr. Pascal" and "Page d'Amour." Dr. Pascal's attempt to solve certain problems in heredity by the study of his own ancestral tree was regarded an offense and profanation by his mother and an old-time servant of the family. He is assisted in the work by his niece and during its progress they discover themselves in love. Forgetful of everything but the object of his devotion he abandons all other interests. Decline and discouragement come and true to his own prediction death by angina pectoris terminates a worthless and unhappy existence. The story is full of tragedy. Stung by poverty, he essayed to obtain money for services long before rendered. His trials in the thankless task will be appreciated by many executors of estates of deceased physicians. An old magistrate whom he had once treated for an affection of the kidneys was first visited. This one explained that he would pay him in October, at which time he expected some money. A septuagenarian paralytic expressed offense that he had been so rude as to send her a note by a domestic and became so vigorous in her criticism of this act of impoliteness that he felt on the defensive and called upon to present excuses for his conduct. One he found suffering from a fever and as impoverished as himself and hadn't heart to formulate any request for money. He was equally unsuccessful with a haberdasher, the wife of an attorney, an old merchant and a broker, all in comfortable circumstances. One had one pretext and another another. There were those who affected not to comprehend him. There remained a marquise, a widow, of an old family, and very rich and avaricious. Her, he had kept for the last. She complained that her tenants did not pay and he received nothing, but she succeeded in obtaining a gratuitous consultation. "And you gave the consultation?" asked Clotilde. "Without doubt. Could I do otherwise?" he replied.

One refreshing sidelight in Page d'Amour is the momentary triumph of the professional spirit over emotional impulsion.

He (Dr. Deberle) entered the room, trembling yet compre