APHORISMS.*

The most instructive history to the physician, is the history of disease.

Many consciences sleep without opiates.

The native language of sorrow is sympathy.

The greeting which the invalid expects, "I hope you are better," sounds like an insult to the healthy.

Wit is like a person of a fine sanguine temperament, he is born with a clear brilliant complexion, and retains it all his life long.

Early paths are often forbidden paths.

Physicians are born honorary members of all human societies.

Every vein, except a silver vein, leads back to the heart. The physician must, like the diplomatist, tread softly. The physician has principally to do with the weakness and weak side of mankind, but it would be bad if he were to study these alone.

Much drink drowns health.

In the world, as in the laboratory, our part is to analyse and to determine accurately individual objects.

Conscientious physicians are as little to be blamed for the death of their patients, as a new-born infant for the death of its mother.

Many a one has nothing holy about him except the os

sacrum.

Physicians who love system, often systematically follow small ends.

*These aphorisms, in the original work, extend to forty-five pages. A great proportion of them are medical puns, the point of which is entirely lost by translation. Of those which remain, such only are given which appear to convey some useful or ingenious remark.

It is with many friendships as with the teeth, when the enamel wears off they begin to give pain.

A trifler sometimes, by the visitation of death, is made watchful, as the sleeper wakes up when the night lamp goes

out.

As a fistula is most quickly cured by opening, so are secret sins by open confession.

Bashfulness is as incurable as hydrophobia.

Lunar caustic is white, but blackens; the hypocritical countenance smiles openly, but blackens privately.

To gild the pill is out of fashion, but it is still necessary to gild the palm.

Malice is unknown to the physician, who only desires to render assistance.

Deliberation promotes decision, but does not create ac

tion.

We begin a new life when we espouse the right side. Most men, even soldiers, risk their lives but once-the physician often.

Autobiography unrolls a mummy before a mirror.

If one must be consumed, let it be rather in the duties of life than on the funeral pyre.

Reviewers are like the scourge, as the tails of comets, they alarm the weak, but do the strong no harm.

The scarcer the game, the more eager the sportsmanthe boy rests not till he grasps the beautiful butterfly, and society rests not till it can cast a spot on the purest nature.

Many a one cannot read what is written in his conscience, because he must so frequently eradicate the bad.

The world will become more and more polite, for since mankind are always prone to treat with respect that which is new, whether it be a new garment or a new friend, so the great increase of communication bringing us continually into contact with new acquaintance, will render the politeness which they require so frequent as to become habitual.

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The wise man is not so much he who understands a great deal, but he who understands what leads to permanent happiness.

He who has no theory is no practitioner.

Herder and Schiller, originally surgeons, in the latter part of their career ceased to open veins, but opened a heaven to thousands.

The rich have an idiosyncrasy, not against devils but against poor devils.

Men think more of those who give them gold, than of those who give them health.

To a careless physician whom one would not trust with a bank cheque ten minutes together, a man will trust his body for years.

A friendship which quickly ceases, cools the heart like evaporating naphtha.

Remarkable men are first fully recognized, when they die, as departing ships leave behind them a train of phosphoric light.

Medicine has for centuries served as a prop to natural science, a benefit which the latter has repaid by making the other feel its superiority.

It is with principles as with copper-plates; after a time they wear out.

We should do with our acquirements as Tippoo Saib with his string of pearls, always be upon the look-out for a most costly one.

As water inwardly expands itself in freezing, so does a strong mind amidst the torpidity of surrounding cold. He who governs himself, governs also even when he must obey others.

Kind words do in life what honey does in an electuary, they bind heavy miscible things together.

Death, like the apothecary, gathers roots in the spring, flowers when they are fully blown, and fruits after they are fully ripe.

Powerful minds, like the American aloe, attain their youth in old age.

The physician needs a chart rather than a map, it is more important to him to know what to avoid than where to tarry.

As fluids stand highest in the smallest capillary, so the emptiest head carries itself ever the highest.

The worst inheritance is an hereditary disease.

Eminent men are the lighthouses of mankind.

Do those who look sour carry about with them their trials preserved in vinegar?

There are authors who grow to giants by filling reams of paper, yet the sling of a Review throws down the Goliath. He who listens to all kinds of communications, holds his ear over a sounding-shell.

The galvanic column is Galvani's pillar of fame.
Before weeping eyes opposition trembles.

Our knowledge resembles waiting before a closed glass door, through which we are only permitted to look, not to enter.

Painful experience like narcotic poisons makes us cold. The innocence of youth has no merit in it, even poisonous plants in the first year of their germination are harmless.

Only he whose purpose is to save is a member of the Humane Society.

Let the dead rest is a good saying, even the bear bites them no more.

He who looks into the Hospital of Invalids and sees how much contentment may consist with but few limbs, will be ashamed of complaining of imaginary annoyances.

As many roots and flowers are more powerful dried than in their fresh state, so the influence of many men is greater after their death than during their lives.

Individual judgment has the same relation to public

judgment as the watch to the town clock. The former may go ever so rightly, it must be regulated by the latter.

The more the directions of a physician resemble pastoral letters rather than police regulations, the less will they be followed.

The heaviest and the lightest, gold and thought, always keep their value.

The highest praise of a clever book is when it is taken up with pleasure in the hours of sorrow or delight.

Politics bear the same relation to medicine as the remedy Lead to Saturn, who devoured his children. Even the first requisition, to belong to a party, the physician must decline.

As judicial torture, so the vivisection of animals wrings out answers by which humanity is silenced.

It is more than cruel to speak of disease as the punishment of guilt; for what must he have committed in whose heart the wild beast Angina Pectoris has had his claws for years?

He who cannot find an article sometimes fancies it is stolen. So a practitioner, who cannot hit the right view of a case, will sometimes find fault with the uncertainty of remedies, and the pernicious influence of external circumstances, rather than with the deficiency of his own judgment.

A medical consultation is a professional pic-nic. In scientific discussions strife should always be shut out, as in the Eternal City the Temple of Bellona was placed outside the walls.

The poor often possess in greater abundance than the rich the most valuable treasures, namely, health and a good conscience.

It is as difficult in general to decide what is truth and what is folly, as what is physic and what is poison.

Days of happiness make the past like a conservatory in which fragrant plants are kept.