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266 who could become an eloquent advocate; and the natural fitness of an individual for his calling should not be overlooked; yet the public, and sometimes the profession, appear to suppose that all that is necessary to qualify an individual to become a doctor in medicine, is a given amount of medical knowledge, and whoever brings this requisition, even if he have no other, is initiated.

Although it may be impossible to remedy this evil, yet it may be proper to consider it. The allotment of occupations and professions seems to be given to blind chance. Some apparently trifling accident—some freak of good or ill fortune—often casts the lot of an individual for life. Some, by their own voluntary choice, select, as the business of their whole lives, a profession of the duties of which they know little or nothing. Others appear to adopt it as a choice of evils, not liking anything else; nor would they like that, if they really understood what it was. The young man, unacquainted with his own undeveloped powers, cannot himself foresee how he shall succeed in this or any other profession. Mere scholarship is by no means all that is