r, should you succeed in carrying
out the idea with which you have commenced, you will, I fear, be the cause
of great injury to our profession, and probably of great loss of life, for
you will thereby arrest the dissemination of knowledge. We have, here and
abroad, thousands of industrious and thoughtful men, more intent upon
doing good than upon pecuniary profit, who give themselves to the study of
particular diseases, furnishing the results to our journals, and not
unfrequently publishing monographs of the highest value. The sale of these
is always small, and their publication not unfrequently makes heavy drafts
on the small means of their authors. Such men are of infinite use to me,
for it is by aid of their most valuable labors that I have found myself
enabled to prepare the numerous and popular works that I have given to the
world. Look at them. There are several volumes of each, of which I sell
thousands annually, to my great profit. Deprive me of the power to avail
myself of the brains of the working men of the profession and my books
will soon cease to be of any value, and I shall lose the large income now
realized from them, while the public will suffer in their health by reason
of the increased difficulty of disseminating information."

The professor would ask you to look at his lectures and satisfy yourself
that they contained no single idea that had originated with himself.
"How," he would ask, "could these valuable lectures have been produced,
had I been deprived of the power to avail myself of the facts collected by
the working-men, and the principles deduced from them by the thinkers of
the world? I have no leisure to collect facts or analyze them. For many
years past, these lectures have yielded me a large income, and so will
they continue to do, provided I be allowed to do in future as in time past
I have done, appropriate to my own use all the new facts and new ideas I
meet with, crediting their authors or not as I find it best to suit my
purpose. Abandon your idea, my dear sir; it cannot be carried out. The men
who work, and the men who think, must content themselves with fame, and be
thankful if the men who write books and deliver lectures do not
appropriate to themselves the entire credit of the facts they use, and the
ideas they borrow."

The teacher of natural science would say: "My friend, have you reflected
on what you are about to do? Look at our collections, and see how they
have been enlarged