disown that motherhood must stand apart. How can a profession
however strong, march all at once against such an overwhelming
influence? Itself born, perchance, under the influence bred
under it, how shall it immediately be transformed? Why disobey
the influence? It is in the _interest_ of the doctor to obey, in
a worldly sense of view; but more--it is in his _nature_ to
obey. The strong bands of nature and interest go hand in hand.
Is it wonderful that the genius of a professional man so
situated should, according to the quality of his genius, uphold,
root and branch, the role of his nativity? On the contrary the
wonder is that he has ever done anything else. It is most
natural that he should be amongst the last to take up what
revolutionizes all the manners, and customs, and faiths, of
society. A lady will ask her physician the question, May I take
wine, Sir? As much as you like Madam; it is very bad for you and
I take none, but that is your business entirely. Henceforth that
gentleman is said to be one who prescribes alcohol in any
quantity. In fact, he never prescribes it, for although when
forbidding is hopeless, there is all the difference in the world
between prescribing and permitting, permitting goes down as if
it were prescribing. Often a patient will try to compromise. On
an ocean of whisky and water, brandy and soda, or other
poisonous mixture, he is floating into fatal paralysis. You tell
him so faithfully, and he says he knows it and will drop down to
claret. If you assent, he tells his friends you have changed his
brandy or whisky to wine; if you dissent, he says you have left
your duty as a doctor undone, in order to become an advocate for
abstaining temperance, about which he is as competent a judge as
you are, and he won't pay fees for that advice. He pays to be
cured of his disease, not to be dragooned into a system peculiar
in its tenets. In an alcoholic world there is a strong argument
in this decision. It rolls splendidly, especially down hill."

After speaking of non-alcoholic physicians, and their opinions of the
harmfulness of alcohol, he adds:--

"On the other side, there are practitioners who, under the
magnetism of public opinion, as earnestly believe the opposite
in relation to alcohol, who declare they could not,
conscientiously, practice their pr