Sackett, and was one of the first, if not the very first, student from Westchester County to matriculate in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York City, where he graduated March 16, 1812. Beginning practice in his native county, in a year he moved to Scaten Island, but, at the solicitation of his father, soon returned to Jefferson Valley. He had become a meml)er of the Westchester County Medical Society a year before his graduation, and when, fifty years afterward, he resigned, he said, in liis characteristic letter : --

"I witnessed its (tlie Society's) gradual rise to distinction until, in tlie acme of its usefulness and glory it wns crippled by au act of our ignorant legislature. To court popularity and to support a mistaken Democracy, they, in their zeal to level all distinctions among men, passed a law declaring the ignorant <|uack and the most learned physician on a perfect level and equally entitled to protection. Since then our authority to keep down rjuackery haa ceased, sn that now a large portion of our best practice is enjoyed by ignorant quacks under the cloak of liomojopathy. The consequences to our society are almost ruinous. Shorn of its power, its members have become discouraged, and a few only of the most faithful are found attending its meetings. AU our struggles must be laborious so long as ignorance of physiology prevails among the people, and that must continue a long time.

" I am now in my seventieth year. I consider myself professionally dead. It is my last prayer that you may persevere until the rays of knowledge shall illumine the eyes of the people and induce them to value the realities of knowledge over ignorance and regard our profession in its true light."