I will briefly cite two examples in illustration of this point. A gentleman, who had a friend sick under the care of a physician, who was strongly in favor of the stimulating mode of practice, was led to doubt the propriety of the treatment, and as he watched the case he doubted more and more. He at length ventured to lessen the amounts of brandy and laudanum, taking care to conceal the fact from the patient, who was every now and then calling for them, because he felt a death-like sinking, and he was afraid that his pulse was failing. He found that in proportion as he lessened them the case improved, and he very soon discontinued them altogether. There is not a doubt, that in this case the stimulants, though affording temporary relief to the patient’s sense of exhaustion, kept the man sick, and the discontinuance of them was the cause of his recovery. A similar experience has been detailed to me by others. Such cases as the one which I have mentioned may appear very badly, and yet the amount of disease may be slight. Some disordered state of stomach, which a very little appropriate medicine, with the aid of rest and a proper diet, would remove, is often the whole of the disease. I will give here the testimony of one among many physicians to substantiate this assertion. The physician, to whom I refer, told me, that when he began to practice, there was an elder physician on the ground, who used brandy and laudanum largely in a certain class of cases. They were cases in which there was disordered stomach, with considerable tendency to a depressed state of the whole system. The patients were commonly sick from one week to three, or even four weeks, and though they excited much alarm among their friends, they all, with but a single exception, finally recovered. He followed the example of his elder friend for some time in similar cases, but he soon began to doubt the propriety of such high stimulation. The result was, that after a while he resorted to a very simple practice in such cases, which produced entire relief in one or two days; whereas, under the stimulating treatment, they would have been long and troublesome. I might mention many cases from Thompsonian practice, which would illustrate the same point, but it is not necessary. Though the community do not generally distinguish between cases which are necessarily of a grave character, and those which are made so by bad treatment, there are occasionally individuals, who do to some good extent make this distinction.