In this respect I shall ask you to be indulgent to a weakness of seniority by which it tends to overestimate the value of the elementary and the simple.—
It is a privilege of the practice of medicine to pursue the "dying ideal," so beautifully depicted by Wilfred Trotter,* when he said that "an occupation for adults should allow of intellectual freedom, should give character as much chance as cleverness, and should be subject to the tonic of difficulty and the spice of danger." The variety of medicine and its texture are far removed from the artificial neatness of the lecture and textbook. Alert and enquiring minds are needed to foster happy and expert practice. In training for this occupation for adults, it is to be hoped that the student in his own good time will pass beyond the preliminary stage of precept and rule, when the going is monotonous