reader's acquired knowledge and to his personal sense of the value of truth.

Physicians are often blamed for not sooner warning a family of the fact that, in some case he and it are anxiously watching, death is inevitable. As to this the doctor has very mingled feelings. Sometimes he lacks courage, sometimes he is not sure enough to speak. A weak man fears that he will lose his patient and some quack be called in, and thus lessen the little chance yet left. Most of us can recall painful interviews in which a relative insisted on a definite opinion, which we were unable to give. As to cases where there is little or no doubt left, perfect frankness should be, and is, I think, our rule, but no one knows better, or as well as we, how numberless are the chances of escape for cases which seem to be at their worst. Hence a part of the reluctance the physician has to pronounce a verdict of fatal character.

There is another matter of moment as to cases known to be hastening to a fatal conclusion. The responsibility of withholding this knowledge from the patient is usually shifted on to the shoulders of relatives or friends. The medical adviser reports to them his opinion and leaves with them the power to act.

He is often asked if to know that death seems certain makes less the chance of recovery or shortens the lessening number of the days of life yet left. It has often fallen to my sad lot, as to that of many of my medical brothers, to have to tell a patient that he is to die. Some isolated man asks it. Some lonely hospital patient has just reasons for knowing early or late in his disease the truth as the doctor sees it. I have never been able to feel certain that in any case of acute or hopeless illness to know surely what lay before a sick man did distinctly shorten his life. I have seen many people in apparent health made ill by the shock of emotion,—by fear, grief, anger, jealousy. Diseased persons feel less, or show less in a physical way, the results we might expect to see from even the most rudely conveyed intelligence as to their probable future.

It was not my wish to enter into a long discussion of all the qualities which go to make up the ideal physician. I desired chiefly to consider his principal needs, to point out in big defence certain of his embarrassments, and to leave the reader with some sense of help towards knowing whether his adviser was such as he should be in the more important qualities which go to make the true physician. There are other and minor matters which are not without their relative gravity in his life. Some are desirable but not truly essential, and yet help or hurt him much. Whether he is gentle and well-mannered, is socially agreeable, or as to this negative, influences much the choice of the woman on whom, as a rule, comes finally the decision of who her family physician shall be. Too often she is caught by the outside show of manners, and sets aside an abler and plainer man, who has more really the true manners of the heart, yet lacks the power to make himself pleasant. Desirable it is, of course, to be what so many of the best physicians have been, refined and tactful gentlemen, and also charming companions. But a man may be a most competent, clear-headed, honest, scrupulously careful doctor, and yet be plain, ill-dressed, and uninteresting, and all this it is as well to understand. The mass of professional opinion is not so easily pleased as are individual patients. It decides pretty early in any large community, and classifies its members accurately, reversing very often the verdict of the juries of matrons, who do so much to make or mar our early fates. Soon or late it sifts the mass, knows who are the thorough, trustworthy, competent, hard-headed practitioners, who are the timid, who the too daring, who ride hobbies, and who trust too much to drugs. Soon, too, it distinguishes those on whom it can call in emergencies, and the highest class of men who have the great gift of discovery and the genius of observation.

From the public we can look for no such justice, and our professional manners forbid us to speak of our brethren, save among ourselves, with perfect freedom. As a profession, it is my sincere conviction that in our adherence to a high code of moral law, and in the general honesty with which we do our work, no other profession can be compared with ours. Our temptations, small and large, negative and positive, are many and constant, and yet I am quite sure that no like group of men affords as few illustrations of grave moral weaknesses. It is commonplace to say that our lives are one long training in charity, self-abandonment, all forms of self-restraint. The doctor will smile at my thinking it needful to even state the fact. He begins among the poor; all his life, in or out of hospitals, he keeps touch of them always. He sells that which men can neither weigh nor measure, and this sets him over all professions, save one, and far above all forms of mere business. He is bound in honor to profit by no patent, to disclose all he has learned, and to give freely and without reward of his best care to all others of his profession who may be sick. What such a life makes of a man is largely a question of original character, but in no other form of occupation is there such constant food useful to develop all that is best and noblest.

Popular opinion has been prone to decide that the physician who is anything else than this is a person not to be trusted. The old axiom is too often quoted as concerns us, "Jack of all trades, master of none." But there are enough men who have the power to be master of many trades and passed master of one. It is a question of applicative energy. Few men in early life can do much more than is needed to learn our art and its sister sciences; but, as time goes on, there are many who can add to it other pursuits which greatly benefit them in a wide sense, and enlarge and strengthen their mental powers, or pleasantly contribute to the joys of life, and so even to the growth of a man's moral nature. The wise physician, who is fond of etching or botany, the brush, or the chisel or the pen, or who is given to science, does well to keep these things a little in the background until he is securely seated in the saddle of professional success. Then usually he may feel free to reasonably follow out his tastes, and to write, or in any other way insist on freedom to use or make public his results. If only he has the competent fund of persistent industry to draw upon, he will be not the worse, but the better, physician for such enlargement of his pursuits as I refer to, for we may feel sure that in my profession there is room for the direct or indirect use of every possible accomplishment.

CONVALESCENCE.

To my mind, there is nothing more pleasant than the gradual return to health after some revolutionary disease which has removed a goodly portion of the material out of which is formed our bodily frame. Nature does this happy work deftly in most cases, where, at least, no grave organic mischief has been left by the malady; and in the process we get such pleasantness as comes always from the easy exercise of healthy function. The change from good to better day by day is in itself delightful, and if you have been so happy, when well, as to have loved and served many, now is the good time when bun and biscuit come back to you,—shapely loaves of tenderness and gracious service. Flowers and books, and folks good and cheery to talk to, arrive day after day, and have for you a new zest which they had not in fuller health. Old tastes return and mild delights become luxuries, as if the new tissues in nerve and brain were not sated, like those of the older body in which they are taking their places.

When you are acutely ill, the doctor is business-like and gravely kind; you want him in a way, are even anxious to see him for the relief he may bring, or the