profession, or of society at large. The profession in this place have felt an honest pride in its comparative freedom from quackery and empiricism; there is perhaps no place of equal size and importance, where the practice of medicine has been so secure from the inroads of knavery and imposture. It is now to be determined whether it shall continue so; whether, when the most rapid advances are making in learning and knowledge, when new opportunities are opening for the cultivation and improvement of medical science, when the members of the profession are becoming better educated and better fitted for its duties, society will choose to go back for half a century, and adopt a practice, which experience has always shown to be unsafe and pernicious.