ite; she cheats the sick
and the dying with illusions better than any anodynes. If there are
cogent reasons why a patient should be undeceived, do it deliberately
and advisedly, but do not betray your apprehensions through your
tell-tale features.

We had a physician in our city whose smile was commonly reckoned as
being worth five thousand dollars a year to him, in the days, too, of
moderate incomes. You cannot put on such a smile as that any more than
you can get sunshine without sun; there was a tranquil and kindly nature
under it that irradiated the pleasant face it made one happier to meet
on his daily rounds. But you can cultivate the disposition, and it will
work its way through to the surface, nay, more,--you can try to wear a
quiet and encouraging look, and it will react on your disposition and
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