nd make you
like what you seem to be, or at least bring you nearer to its own
likeness.

Your patient has no more right to all the truth you know than he has to
all the medicine in your saddlebags, if you carry that kind of
cartridge-box for the ammunition that slays disease. He should get only
just so much as is good for him. I have seen a physician examining a
patient's chest stop all at once, as he brought out a particular sound
with a tap on the collarbone, in the attitude of a pointer who has just
come on the scent or sight of a woodcock. You remember the Spartan boy,
who, with unmoved countenance, hid the fox that was tearing his vitals
beneath his mantle. What he could do in his own suffering you must learn
to do for others on whose vital organs disease has fastened its devouring
teeth. It is a terrible thing to take away hope, even earthly hope, from
a fellow-creature. Be very careful what names you let fall before your
patient. He knows what it means when you tell him he has tubercles or
Bright's disease, and, if he hears the word carcinoma, he will certainly
look it out in a medical dictionary, if he does not interpret its dread
significance on the instant. Tell him he has asthmatic symptoms, or a
tendency to the gouty diathesis, and he will at once think of all the
asthmatic and gouty old patriarchs he has ever heard of, and be
comforted. You need not be so cautious in speaking of the health of rich
and remote relatives, if he is in the line of succession.

Some shrewd old doctors have a few phrases always on hand for patients
that will insist on knowing the pathology of their complaints without the
slightest capacity of understanding the scientific explanation. I have
known the term "spinal irritation" serve well on such occasions, but I
think nothing on the whole has covered so much ground, and meant so
little, and given such profound satisfaction to all parties, as the
magnificent phrase "congestion of the portal system."

Once more, let me recommend you, as far as possible, to keep your doubts
to yourself, and give the patient the benefit of your decision.
Firmness, gentle firmness, is absolutely necessary in this and certain
other relations. Mr. Rarey with Cruiser, Richard with Lady Ann, Pinel
with his crazy people, show what steady nerves can do with the most
intractable of animals, the most irresistible of despots, and the most
unmanageable of invalids.

If you cannot acquire and keep the confidenc