ures and relieving others, and also allaying fear and administering comfort to the minds of their friends, will make you realize your own usefulness and the great good our noble, humane, and beneficent profession enables you to confer on suffering humanity, the contemplation of which should make you cheerful and happy, and satisfy you with yourself and with your life-work, in spite of all the contentions and sorrows and disappointments you are subject to in practice.

The physician's visit, being the chief event of a sick person's day, is watched for eagerly. Let no ordinary occurrences interfere with your punctuality in making it; also study to acquire an agreeable, gentlemanly, and professional mode of approaching the sick and taking leave of them. There is an art, a perfection, in entering the chamber of sickness with a thoughtful and dignified, yet gentle, manner that clearly evinces interest and a determination to master the case,-in asking the necessary questions, in making the requisite examination, then carefully ordering the proper remedies, giving your opinions, directions, etc., and departing with a cheerful, self-satisfied demeanor that puts the patient at his ease, and inspires confidence on the part of himself and his friends, and a belief that you can and will do for him all that the science of medicine enables any one to do. The personal appearance, walk, movements, gestures, bow, voice, language, conversation, and countenance of some physicians are as cheering and confidenceinspiring to the sensitive nerves of the sick as sunbeams on a May day; those of others, as rude, coarse, cold, crabbed, and repulsive as a March wind, contrasting like:—

Honey versus vinegar.

Familiarity with the many little details of the sick-roomapplying bandages, making beef-teas, gruels, mustard plasters, poultices, etc., and with dressing wounds, passing catheters, reducing hernias; getting the fish-bone from the throat, the

splinter or the needle from the hand, or the mote from the eye, or teaching the nurse how to prepare the obstetrical bed; seeing that each of those working subordinate to you do their part, and various other minor duties that you may be there incidentally called on to perform or direct-will often do more to create a favorable impression than your pills and powders. Indeed, it is to a great extent by minor matters that watchful nurses and other habitués of the sick-room will judge you.

As a physician you should he hopeful, and never abandon cases because they are desperate. Hope creates ideas, generates new expedients, brings up useful reflection, and leads to fresh endeavors; besides, the public believes that the only way to get cured, and render impossibility possible, after a physician loses hope and gives the patient up, is to give him up, as he is then not in the psychological mood to discover and avail himself of further opportunities.

The faculty of keeping contentment and confidence alive in the bosom of the patient and of his friends is a great one, and the look with which you meet them has much to do with this; a bright, fresh, thoughful countenance, and an easy, cheerful, soothing, professional air and manner are powers that will impart tranquillity and repose to your patient's mind and carry many a one with you toward recovery. A few cheering words sometimes relight the lamp of hope and do the timorous and despondent as much or more good than a prescription. It is, therefore, your duty to gain and retain the confidence of your patient and his friends by all honorable means, to be cheerful or serious, sympathizing or immovable as occasion requires.

It is often very pleasing to the sick to be allowed to tell, in their own way, whatever they deem important for you to know; give to all a fair, courteous hearing, and, even though Mr. Humdrum's and Mrs. Lengthy's statements are tedious, do not abruptly cut them short, but endure and listen with

calm, respectful attention. A patient may deem a symptom very important that you know to be otherwise, yet he will not be satisfied with your views unless you show sufficient interest in all the symptoms at least to hear them described. When, for want of time, you cannot listen further, or where the recital grows too tedious and becomes too irrelevant, or begins again with a tiresome sameness of complaints, do not lose temper or manifest any annoyance, or check him by a rude order to "stop," but suddenly ask him some diverting question about his sickness, or to show his tongue, or take out your watch and begin to count his pulse with moving lips, as if completing your examination. Such expedients often serve the purpose with hypochondriacal men, garrulous women, and tedious chronics in general.

To have a good eye to see and a quick brain to understand your duty, and to be equally prompt and self-reliant in doing it, as if endowed by nature with inborn acuteness of perception and intuitive skill, is one of the strongest points you can possess, and gives easy advantage over Dr. Slowman, Dr. Wate, Dr. Dullhead, Dr. Dillydally, and Dr. Timid, with:

Too much gelatin and too little fiber,

who, wrapped in the garments of sloth, and moving at a snail's pace, perform their part as painfully slow, undetermined, and cautious as if every diagnostic pebble were a high rock, and every therapeutic molehill a great mountain, and falter and fail at every emergency:

As nerveless as the weakest woman.

People invariably admire and appreciate the quick and keen man who can take the responsibility of anything, anywhere at the critical time; indeed, a bold, prompt act, done with :—

Brain and backbone,

at the opportune moment, with steadiness of mind and nerve, if

successful, often creates a species of faith bordering on idolatry. Caution and courage make a good combination, and :—

The man who hits the moment is the man.

Therefore never falter in emergency, but make sure to do the proper thing.

Capital operations in surgery illustrate this: the manual parts-expertness with the knife, etc.—are deeply impressive, and receive vastly more praise from the public than knowing when to operate and how to conduct the after-treatment. Indeed, people imagine that the comparative scarcity of surgeons is because but few of our number have the surgical instinct and the nerve to dare do great operations. The truth is, almost every physician very properly does his own minor surgery,— adjusts fractures, reduces dislocations, treats wounds, etc.,— and would also prepare to perform capital operations but for the reason that only a few are required to do all the surgery there is to be done, and but few can get a support from it. A large city with its hundreds of physicians will have less than a dozen who are prepared to do capital operations, and the majority of these have a great deal more medical than surgical practice.

If you know any one's ailments so well as to sit down and tell him exactly how he feels better than he can tell you, he will be apt to believe all you afterward say and do. To be manysided; to possess flexibility of temper and suavity of manner, self-command, quick discernment, address, ready knowledge of human nature, and the happy genius of honestly adapting yourself to varying circumstances and to all kinds of people, at the couch of splendor and the cot of squalor, are great necessities in our checkered profession. You will meet patients of various and opposite temperaments and qualities: the refined lady and the hod-carrier, the devout and the Godless, the aged and the young, the hopeful and the despondent,

the bold and the diffident, the profound and the superficial. Let each and all find in you his ideal. Seek to penetrate the character of each and all:

Somebodies and nobodies,

and to become an expert in adapting your manner and language to whoever and whatever is before you. Mind-reading and the study of character are both parts of your duty.

If you also have the self-command to control your emotions, temper, and passions, and to maintain a cool, philosophical equipoise and inflexible serenity of countenance:

Calm as a summer evening or a frozen lake,

under the thousand irritative and exasperating provocations given to you by foolish patients and their querulous and rude, or excited and intolerably impudent friends, who storm at your coming too early or too late, too often or not often enough, or accuse you of giving the wrong medicine or in the wrong doses, of being too fast or too slow, it will give you great advantage at critical moments over the nervous, quick-tempered, and excitable, who unguardedly blurt out with "oh! blanketyblank-dash-blink-! -, : ; — ! ! ? ?—*?? !!!!!— -,:;-?", etc., and will generally redound both to your advantage and to your credit.

A brusque, tornado-like manner, or eccentric rudeness, is fatal to a physician's success unless sustained by unquestionable skill or reputation. A simple, humane, gentle, and refined demeanor and low tone of voice, and a smooth, affable way, are suitable to the largest part of the community:

Manners gentle; discourse pure.

Remember that a rough, unfeeling, or arbitrary manner, as if the heart were a butcher's or made of marble, is quite different from the serene composure and intelligent sympathy