As to the mode in which a medical witness should deliver his evidence, very different advice appears to have been given by different authorities; while some impatient of delay, and dreading the arts of examination, recommend their pupils or readers to open at once all the stores of their reasoning and information; others, fearing the effect which cross-examination may have on nervous or embarrassed witnesses, advise that no more shall be disclosed than categorically meets the question of the counsel; and to this we incline, with this difference, that, as we should deem too costive a retention of the truth as blamable as the flow of garrulity with which we have sometimes seen a court overwhelmed, we recommend the witness to steer a middle course, first answering patiently, distinctly, and tersely, the questions put by the Counsel on both sides, the Court and the jury; and if none of these elicit the whole truth, and any material point remains to be disclosed, the presiding judge will always admit and gratefully receive the additions or explanations which may be necessary to the ends of justice. The witness is next to consider, what is and what is not evidence: we cannot follow this subject in all its bearings, nor indeed is it here necessary, a few points must however be remembered; and first of notes; these if taken upon the spot or immediately after a transaction, may be used by the witness to refresh his memory; and as to dates, numbers, or quantities, it is generally expedient to have them; the notes should be original, not copies; if there be any point in them which the witness does not recollect except that he finds it there, such point is not evidence, for the notes are only to assist recollection not to convey information. The witness must relate only that which he himself has seen or observed; that which he has heard from others is not evidence as coming from him; except indeed where some expressions or declarations of the parties concerned have become a part of the _res gesta_. but the declarations of a dying man are evidence when related by a third person on oath, though the party making them was not sworn, for the law presumes that the solemnity of the occasion may dispense with the form, and that a man, trembling on the brink of eternity, will never risk salvation by falsehood. To give this weight to a declaration, it is necessary that the party should believe himself to be dying; Mr. Justice _Bailey_, is reported to have said, that the party must be satisfied that recovery was impossible: we think the reporter must have been mistaken; for such a rule would exclude all such declarations; hope is the latest faculty of the human mind. “I am better,” has not unfrequently been the last articulation of expiring nature.