_Reasons for the Rule._—It does not clearly appear, in any of the cases usually cited as authority, why the distinction is made between legal and medical advisers, but it is apparent that the privilege does not rest upon considerations of honor nor of confidence,[210] nor even upon the urgency of the situation under which the communication is made; for disclosures are made to a physician frequently to save life, or to a priest for reasons of eternal import, while those made to an attorney insure at most protection from temporal annoyance. The privilege of attorneys seems to be founded upon considerations of public policy in the administration of justice in the courts; attorneys are a part of the system, as are grand jurors, petit jurors, and judges,[211] and even arbitrators;[212] but physicians are no part of that system, and a disclosure of confidences made to them in no way tends to weaken the system or render it ineffectual, while the compulsory examination of lawyers would tend to the suppression of the truth in litigation by discouraging confidence between attorney and client. This, perhaps, can be assigned as the reason for the distinction; a distinction which does not differentiate lawyers from physicians, but agents in the administration of justice from all others.[213] _Criticism of the Rule._—Though the privilege of attorneys was adopted to enforce respect for the law as securing the rights of persons entitled to its protection, by establishing inviolable confidence between them and the officer who represents them in their dealings in the law, and though it was not the purpose of the law to enforce sentiment or to elevate one profession above another, the sentimental idea did not suffer neglect for the want of advocates. Justice Buller lamented the narrowness of the rule,[214] and Mr. Best has criticised it as harsh in itself, of questionable policy, and at variance with the practice in France and the statute law in some of the United States of America.[215] THE RULE IN THE UNITED STATES. It is to be assumed, in the absence of statutes varying the rule, and of decisions to the contrary, in the several States of the United States, that in those States which derived their law from England the same rule of evidence obtains as that above enunciated. But many of the legislatures have by statute extended the privilege to communications between physicians and their patients, as well as to other specified confidential communications which it does not fall within the scope of this work to discuss.[216]