So it becomes a difficult, perhaps a needless, and almost certainly a thankless task to attempt to write the sketch proposed.

On the 1st day of June, 1858, the writer of this chapter read the annual address, as president, before the Medical Society of the County of Westchester, taking for his theme " Biographical Sketches of the Deceased Physicians of Westchester County, N. Y.," which address was subsequently published in pamphlet form, " by order of the Society." (New York, 1861, 8vo., pp. 52.)

He must now go back seven and twenty years, and make extracts from that " plain, unvarnished tale of character, merits, traits and experience of those medical men who have previously been the incumbents of the field we now occupy," to which will be added brief sketches of several honored members of our beloved profession who have since been called from their labor -- some at the full end of man's allotted time, and others abruptly, in the prime of man-

THE MEDICAL PROFESSIOxN.

hood's vigor, and in the midst of their greatest usefulness.'

Over twenty years ago, Dr. James Fountain gave the writer a little document that was previously supposed to be irrecoverably lost, which contains the original records of the first five meetings of the Medical Society of Westchester County. This book was restored to the society, by which it is now preserved. It begins thus, --

" At a respectable Jleetiug of Physicians of the County of Westchester on the 8th Day of 5Iay, 1797-- at the House of William Barker in the White Plains -- Present --