And yet, in conclusion, I have to confess that besides exposing my own health, I made many medical blunders. I would not again run the risk to health or reputation which, during this long trial of several months, I certainly ran, for any sum of money which king Croesus or the Rothschilds could command. Nor do I believe an intelligent physician can do it, without being guilty of a moral wrong. Every one has his province; let him carefully ascertain what that is, and confine himself to it. The acting commander in an important military expedition has no right to place himself in the ranks of those who are about to leap a ditch, scale a wall, or charge bayonet. Paul has no right to labor in Athens when he knows perfectly well that he can do more good in Jerusalem, and the voice of God, by his Providence or otherwise, calls him thither. And "to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." CHAPTER XXXIV. MILK PUNCH FEVER. A certain young woman who had great general confidence in my skill, after I had stood by her many long hours in one of Nature's sorest trials, was left at length in a fair way to recover, except that she was exceedingly exhausted, and needed the most careful attendance on the part of those around her. She no longer needed any medicine, nothing but to be let alone. In other words, she needed nothing but good nursing and entire freedom from all care and responsibility. Being obliged at this juncture to leave her for nearly the whole night, I gave the best directions to her principal nurse of which I was capable, as well as the principal reasons on which it was founded. She seemed entirely submissive, and perhaps, in theory, was so. But in my zeal to make them understand that I was acting on common-sense principles, I committed one error, a very common one, indeed, but yet an error. It was that of reasoning with them with a view to make every thing particularly intelligible. One has authority, in these matters, as long as he takes the _attitude_ of authority, but the moment he descends to the general level of his patients, and in true republican style puts himself on a par with them, he begins to lose their confidence as a physician. You may not be sensible of a loss of this sort, nor even the physician. You may even think the reverse were more true. But you deceive yourself. Though your patients may love you better as a friend or even as a father, yet they have lost confidence in you medically, in nearly the same proportion. Strange indeed that it should be so; but so, according to my own observation, it ever has been. That a prophet is "without honor"--and most so in his own country and among his own personal friends--is as true now as it was eighteen hundred years ago.