The patient laid on the bed of sickness, having many wants and occasions for a thousand little offices, but being unable to assist himself, generally desires, and, where apprehension does not cause desertion, obtains the aid of good and gentle friends, whose very presence affords a gratification to the sufferer which none can sufficiently value, who have not, like him, felt its blessings. Their assistance and constant presence is absolutely necessary to supply his several wants, and to render a situation, often painful, and ever irksome, less acutely so. But not more necessary is such assistance to the mitigation of the sufferings of the body, and the soothing, the calming of a fevered mind, than is it urgently wished for, and longed for by the patient, to whom even the momentary absence of the ministering being from his bedside is frequently the cause of much mental agitation and of pain. But where, as we have often seen, the patient has still his senses left, and dearly loves the objects around him, what must be the amount of that bitterness of mental struggle going on in his breast, alternately heaving with desire for their presence as his greatest comfort, and with the alarm every amiable being must feel, lest those most dear to him should fall the victims of their tenderness, and be cut down themselves, in their holy endeavours to relieve his sufferings? The apprehensions of the patient lest those kind and beloved friends ministering to his wants, and nobly incurring on his account all the risk of a dangerous situation, should unhappily derive from him, through the medium of Atmospheric Contagion, the same disease,—are calculated to produce a state of excitement highly injurious and directly opposed to that calm and cheerful state of mind so favourable to his recovery. But these apprehensions are often changed for the dreadful reality, and no little mental suffering has been produced, and no trifling obstacle to the convalescence of a patient has been raised up, by the intimation that a dear friend has caught the pestilence from him, and has in consequence been deprived of life. The belief in the doctrine of Atmospheric Contagion is hurtful also to the friends and attendants of the patient—by its naturally conveying the impression that he is a centre of a poisonous agent, whose immediate tendency is to propagate the distemper and diffuse itself through the atmosphere, extending to it, its deleterious attributes, to be felt by all who respire it. The poison is said to diffuse itself in the air of the apartment; hence it is believed, that entering into the apartment is tantamount to destruction, or at least, is nothing less than exposure to an influence of the most virulent and deadly quality.