In the account of my distresses, I have passed over the slanders which were propagated against me by some of my brethren. I have mentioned them only for the sake of declaring, in this public manner, that I most heartily forgive them; and that if I discovered, at any time, an undue sense of the unkindness and cruelty of those slanders, it was not because I felt myself injured by them, but because I was sure they would irreparably injure my fellow-citizens, by lessening their confidence in the only remedies that I believed to be effectual in the reigning epidemic. One thing in my conduct towards these gentlemen may require justification; and that is, my refusing to consult with them. A Mahometan and a Jew might as well attempt to worship the Supreme Being in the same temple, and through the medium of the same ceremonies, as two physicians of opposite principles and practice attempt to confer about the life of the same patient. What is done in consequence of such negotiations (for they are not consultations) is the ineffectual result of neutralized opinions; and wherever they take place, should be considered as the effect of a criminal compact between physicians, to assess the property of their patients, by a shameful prostitution of the dictates of their consciences. Besides, I early discovered that it was impossible for me, by any reasonings, to change the practice of some of my brethren. Humanity was, therefore, on the side of leaving them to themselves; for the extremity of _wrong_ in medicine, as in morals and government, is often a less mischief than that mixture of _right_ and _wrong_ which serves, by palliating, to perpetuate evil. After the loss of my health I received letters from my friends in the country, pressing me, in the strongest terms, to leave the city. Such a step had become impracticable. My aged mother was too infirm to be removed, and I could not leave her. I was, moreover, part of a little circle of physicians, who had associated themselves in support of the new remedies. This circle would have been broken by my quitting the city. The weather varied the disease, and, in the weakest state of my body, I expected to be able, from the reports of my pupils, to assist my associates in detecting its changes, and in accommodating our remedies to them. Under these circumstances it pleased God to enable me to reply to one of the letters that urged my retreat from the city, that "I had resolved to stick to my principles, my practice, and my patients, to the last extremity."