1. It will reconcile the country people to the liberality and dignity of your profession, by showing them that you assume no superiority over them from your education, and that you intend to share with them in those toils, which were imposed upon man in consequence of the loss of his innocence. This will prevent envy, and render you acceptable to your patients as men, as well as physicians.
2. By living on a farm you may serve your country, by promoting improvements in agriculture. Chemistry (which is now an important branch of a medical education) and agriculture are closely allied to each other. Hence some of the most useful books upon agriculture have been written by physicians. Witness the essays of Dr. Home of Edinburgh, and of Dr. Hunter of Yorkshire, in England.
3. The business of a farm will furnish you with employment in the healthy seasons of the year, and thereby deliver you from the tædium vitæ, or what is worse, from retreating to low or improper company. Perhaps one cause of the prevalence of dram or grog drinking, with which country practitioners are sometimes charged, is owing to their having no regular or profitable business to employ them, in the intervals of their attendance upon their patients.
4. The resources of a farm will create such an independence as will enable you to practice with more dignity, and at the same time screen you from the trouble of performing unnecessary services to your patients. It will change the nature of the obligation between you and them. While money is the only means of your subsistence, your patients will feel that they are the channels of your daily bread; but while your farm furnishes you with the necessaries of life, your patients will feel more sensibly, that the obligation is on their side, for health and life.
5. The exigencies and wants of a farm in stock and labour of all kinds, will enable you to obtain from your patients a compensation for your services in those articles. They all possess them, and men part with that of which money is only the sign, much more readily than they do with money itself.
6. The resources of a farm will prevent your cherishing, for a moment, an impious wish for the prevalence of sickness in your neighbourhood. A healthy season will enable you to add to the produce of your farm, while the rewards of an unhealthy season will enable you to repair the inconvenience of your necessary absence from it. By these means your pursuits will be marked by that variety and integrity, in which true happiness is said to consist.
7. Let your farms be small, and let your principal attention be directed to grass and horticulture. These afford most amusement, require only moderate labour, and will interfere least with your duties to your profession.
II. Avoid singularities of every kind in your manners, dress, and general conduct. Sir Isaac Newton, it is said, could not be distinguished in company, by any peculiarity, from a common well-bred gentleman. Singularity in any thing, is a substitute for such great or useful qualities as command respect; and hence we find it chiefly in little minds. The profane and indelicate combination of extravagant ideas, improperly called wit, and the formal and pompous manner, whether accompanied by a wig, a cane, or a ring, should be all avoided, as incompatible with the simplicity of science, and the real dignity of physic. There is more than one way of playing the quack. It is not necessary, for this purpose, that a man should advertise his skill, or his cures, or that he should mount a phaeton and display his dexterity in operating, to an ignorant and gaping multitude. A physician acts the same part in a different way, who assumes the character of a madman or a brute in his manners, or who conceals his fallibility by an affected gravity and taciturnity in his intercourse with his patients. Both characters, like the quack, impose upon the public. It is true, they deceive different ranks of people; but we must remember that there are two kinds of vulgar, viz. the rich and the poor; and that the rich vulgar are often upon a footing with the poor, in ignorance and credulity.
III. It has been objected to our profession, that many eminent physicians have been unfriendly to christianity. If this be true, I cannot help ascribing it in part to that neglect of public worship with which the duties of our profession are often incompatible; for it has been justly observed, that the neglect of this religious and social duty, generally produces a relaxation, either in principles or morals. Let this fact lead you, in setting out in business, to acquire such habits of punctuality in visiting your patients, as shall not interfere with acts of public homage to the Supreme Being. Dr. Gregory has observed, that a cold heart is the most frequent cause of deism. Where this occurs in a physician, it affords a presumption that he is deficient in humanity. But I cannot admit that infidelity is peculiar to our profession. On the contrary, I believe christianity places among its friends more men of extensive abilities and learning in medicine, than in any other secular employment. Stahl, Hoffman, Boerhaave, Sydenham, Haller, and Fothergill, were all christians. These enlightened physicians were considered as the ornaments of the ages in which they lived, and posterity has justly ranked them among the greatest benefactors of mankind.