"I will now give you, briefly, her physician's views. He was called soon after the disease had taken hold of her, and made an examination of her case, which he then called dyspepsia, attended with a little inflammation of the right lung, or perhaps, said he, a slight filling up of the air passages, and he thought the lower part of her right lung might be somewhat indurated. 'Still,' said he, 'the case is not a serious one.' These were his very words. He said he could cure her; and, till very lately, he has always held out to her the language of hope. But now he speaks very differently; he says the case is a hopeless one--that of tubercular consumption; and he says he has always known it to be such!--and adds that there is, even now, a small cavity in her right lung, and that her lungs are passing off in her diarrhoea, without any inconvenience in breathing, or any disagreeable sensation in filling the lungs to fulness." It is difficult to believe that a medical man who has any regard for his own reputation, would tell such a downright falsehood, as that above represented; and still more difficult to believe he would make the strange mistake of representing her lungs as passing off through the bowels! Why, they might almost as well pass though the moon! Probably my correspondent did not exactly and truly apprehend his meaning; at least, I would charitably hope so. The appeal for relief was so very urgent, and withal so humble, I visited and examined her, the family physician being present. I found the latter to be a timid invalid, for whom, before I left, I was requested to prescribe; which may account, in part, for his very inefficient practice. I also found him ignorant, in many particulars, of the first principles of his profession; and it was with extreme difficulty--like that of mingling oil with water--that we could unite on any thing reasonable or desirable. He still clung to medicine, as his sheet-anchor in the case, while I was for depending, mainly, on a strict conformity to the laws of health, and the restorative efforts of Nature. There were other difficulties. A part of the family still inclined to a reliance on him and his old system, while the rest were in favor of my general views, as far as they understood them. The patient herself sometimes inclined to one, and sometimes to the other. While in health, she had been a woman of much decision of character; but, in her present condition, she was weak and vacillating.