William Taplin

The AEsculapian Labyrinth Explored William Taplin

Having passed the tedious years of abstruse study and intense application, necessary to your initiation in the mysteries of physic, and replete with a perfect remembrance of all the requisites to this great art, we suppose you recently emerged from the obscurity of dreary walls and dull professors, a phenomænon of universal knowledge and family admiration. The various and elaborate examinations you have passed, with scholastic approbation, having relieved you from the constantly accumulating load of anxiety, you are at length launched into life under a new character, and daily pant to display the dignity of your profession, in the happy appendage of M. D. to the prescriptive initials of your name. You are no longer to be considered a student labouring in the heavy trammels of unintelligible lectures upon philosophy, anatomy, botany, chemistry, and the materia medica, with all their distinct and consequent advantages; or investigating the actual properties of electrical fire and MAGNETIC ENTHUSIASM, but stamped (by royal authority) with the full force of physical agency, and have derived from your merit unlimited permission to cure, "kill or destroy," to the best of your knowledge and abilities, "so help you "God."