I am afraid the patient reader of this long chapter, will be led to one conclusion which the writer would exceedingly regret; viz., that all medical counsel, in chronic disease, is of more than doubtful utility; and that it would be safer to leave it wholly to nature and to good nursing. There are medical men in the world who are honest as well as skilful, and who, because a case is difficult to manage, will not, chameleon-like, tell two or three different stories, and thus half ruin a profession that embraces so many noble and honorable-minded men; nor will they persist in a course of treatment which is evidently murdering their patients. It is hardly needful to say that the patient above described was murdered; but I am obliged to say, without doubt, that there was no necessity of her coming to such an untimely end. Her sister, it seems, thought that, had she fallen into my hands from the first, she might have been saved. I think so too. And yet, it might have been otherwise. In any event, she ought not, at the first, to have been treated for consumption, but for dyspepsia. Starvation, and a little mental quietude, with daily exercise, such as she could bear, in the open air, would have greatly changed her condition, when her diarrhoea first commenced. I never knew a case which was worse managed in my whole life. It is a wonder to me, when I think of it, that she so long survived under it. But it is a wonder, greater still, that medical men who are so unqualified for the duties of their profession as the physicians who were most concerned in the treatment of the above case appear to me to have been, do not feel compelled, by the remonstrances of their own consciences, to quit their profession, and do something for a living for which they are better prepared. CHAPTER XCIV. CURE OF POISON FROM LEAD. Cases of poisoning by lead are occurring in our country almost daily; and it becomes a matter of much importance to know how to treat them. Indeed, there are many who are so susceptible to the action of this deleterious agent, that the reception of a single tumbler of water brought through lead pipes, in a certain condition, into their stomachs, will cause serious disturbance. I have had one patient of this description--a Mr. E., of Worcester, Mass. Some twenty years ago, much of the water used in the village of Dedham, Mass., was conveyed to the village, for half a mile or so, in lead pipes. Many who drank the water were injured by it; some of them for life. A Mr. R., a printer, is believed to have lost his life, by disease which was either induced or aggravated by this cause. I have, myself, been called to prescribe for several, who were probably led into a state of ill health by this unhealthy water. One of the clergymen of the village suffered from it very greatly, though he is, as I believe, yet living.