A clergyman, who is blessed with a good share of plain common sense, in addition to his high talents, and who has uniformly eschewed quackery in medicine as well as in theology, told me that he was once conversant with the practice of two physicians of entirely opposite characters, during the prevalence of an epidemic. The one gave large amounts of medicine, and much of it was of a stimulating nature. He had a great many very sick patients, and there was much noise made about his wonderful cures. The other went about among the sick very quietly, gave but little medicine, and the number of his cases that were protracted and severe was comparatively small. Another instance which I will mention was that of a gentleman, who employed a large number of men in a factory. A great many of them were taken sick, one after another, with what was called the “_sinking typhus_.” He observed that some of them were but slightly ailing at first, and were able to be about the house, but that after a while, under the stimulating practice, they were laid upon their beds. Some died, and many of them were severely sick for some time. He doubted the propriety of the treatment, and his doubts increased with every day’s observation. At length he persuaded some who began to be sick to take some simple medicine, and not send for the physician. The result was successful, and he recommended the same course to a large number, none of whom became very sick. As the community are not apt to make the discrimination which was made by these two individuals, it is easy to see how the injudicious physician and the quack often get the credit of success, in their management of apparently grave cases, when in fact these cases need never to have been of this character, but they might have been cured at the onset by a judicious course in a very short time, or perhaps by the spontaneous efforts of the curative power of nature. The unskillful and ignorant practitioner often suffers disease to establish itself, and thus makes a long case, though even ordinary skill would have succeeded in at once breaking up the attack. And yet, when the patient at last recovers, he may be applauded throughout a neighborhood, perhaps a whole community, as having raised the sick man almost from the dead, when perhaps in the same neighborhood, in a case of a similar character, the attack was successfully broken up, and no credit was given to the skill which did it. This is a point on which undoubtedly the public often give a wrong verdict in their estimate of comparative success.