Note 80 — CANTO III. MANIFESTO.

That learn’d physicians pine with hunger.

No man who possesses a heart, certainly none who possesses bowels, can view us reduced to this deplorable condition, and hear this pathetic appeal, without the sincerest commiseration. The eminent services that our profession have rendered mankind, in contributing to avert some of the greatest curses that ever befel the civilized part of the world, are too well known, and have been too frequently acknowledged to be forgotten, ungratefully, in the day of our adversity. The testimony to this effect of the judicious, the humane Addison, ought often to be brought before the public eye.

“We may lay it down as a maxim,” says that intelligent writer, “that when a nation abounds with physicians it grows thin of people. Sir William Temple is very much puzzled to find out a reason why the northern hive, as he calls it, does not send such prodigious swarms, and overrun the world with Goths and Vandals, as it did formerly: but had that excellent author observed that there were no students in physic among the subjects of Thor and Woden, and that this science very much flourishes in the north at present, he might have found a better solution for this difficulty than any of those he has made use of.” Spectator, No. 21.