much _less_ than the usual
sensibility found in the _healthy_ corresponding part of other patients,
it may safely be pronounced torpid or paralytic, more or less. It lacks
sufficient electro-vitality--is improperly _negative_, and needs to be
treated with the negative pole.

It will often happen that diseased action is found in parts where the
patient was entirely unaware of its existence until the practitioner's
fingers or other electrode revealed it. Again, it will sometimes be
found that there is no disease whatever in parts where the patient
supposed disease to be active. But when we find patients to be
especially nervous, it is not always best to tell them immediately just
what our examinations have revealed to us--how severely or how little we
think them diseased. It is sometimes better to humor, more or less, the
patient's own views for a time; lest, by exciting him or her, we make a
difficult case out of one that might have been mastered with comparative
ease. In this matter discretion should guide us.

But let me say farther, what I deeply feel, that neither do I think it
right to _persistently_ conceal from patients, especially those who are
dangerously affected, a knowledge of their true condition. In my
opinion, physicians often unwittingly incur an awful responsibility in
this way, wronging their patients in the most vital and momentous of all
interests--the interests involved in a due preparation for death. I
believe the true way, in every such case, is for the physician himself,
in a kind and soothing manner, to reveal to the patient, little by
little, if need be, what he really thinks, or to ask the patient's
pastor, or some other calm and judicious person to do it for him. I
believe the visits of a discreet and affectionate pastor, or, in the
absence of a pastor, of some other mild and Christian friend, to the
bedside of the sick is, nine times in ten, not only no embarrassment to
the patient's recovery, but positively favorable to it, and ought to be
habitually encouraged, rather than restrained, by medical
practitioners.

PRESCRIPTIONS.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

The author wishes to caution the reader not to rely merely on the forms
of treatment here prescribed, but to study thoroughly the principles
taught in the preceding pages, until he shall have mastered them, and
can judge for himself of the correctness of these prescriptions. It
should be remembered, however, that the diseases here c