Excerpt from Odd Hours of a Physician The antecedents of this little volume are found in the circumstances, that the author having written a book which was not without a satisfactory share of success, it brought from his publisher a request for a second; and this so persuasively worded - as reference was had to the banker - that to have denied it would have been to admit that a person may be afflicted with the cacoethes scribendi, and at the same time be insusceptible to the solid arguments of the book-makers, - a thing, so far as the author can learn, never yet known, and not well to be made a precedent by anybody. Terms settled (it is comfortable to have all responsi bility on the back of the publisher), it remained Simply to decide as to the nature of the new book, and to secure consent to the employment upon the title-page of a name differing from that Upon the first book, as well as that on the record page of the author's family Bible not that a nom de plume designates an especial modesty, or is indicative of any particular indifference. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.