You discover in your conversations with a physician upon politics, religion, or the occurrences of the day, that he is very credulous. Have you a doubt that the same credulity follows him into a sick room, and mars the accuracy of his observations of disease and of the influence of remedies? And so, on the other hand, the physician who shows a sceptical cast of mind on other subjects, will assuredly be a doubter on a subject clothed with so much uncertainty as medicine is, and his treatment of disease will be marked by hesitation and lack of energy and firmness. You see a physician apt to form his opinions on ordinary subjects hastily. Slight evidence satisfies him, and he makes up his mind at once. It may be that he does it with so much shrewdness that he is very apt to be right in his conclusions; but sometimes he is entirely wrong, because he has in his haste overlooked some apparently slight circumstances which are really of vital importance. There is quite a large class of such minds in the medical profession. They are better fitted to practice in acute forms of disease than in chronic cases. These latter require patient investigation to thread out all their intricate complications. I once knew two physicians of considerable eminence, who had directly opposite casts of mind, in regard to the qualities to which I have just alluded. They lived and practised in the same neighborhood through a long life. The one would spend perhaps an hour in ferreting out all the hidden labyrinths of a chronic case, and I have often been delighted, as he would clearly and in choicest language unfold his views, after he had concluded his examination. The other never wanted more than a few minutes to learn all he wished to know of a case, and he was prepared to act. Possessed of much native shrewdness, it was astonishing to see how he would avoid error in forming his hasty opinions. He seemed to be aware in what his forte lay. He had an abhorrence of all long and intricate cases, and turned them over, so far as he could, to his brethren; and he took peculiar pleasure in managing acute cases, in which the changes were rapid, and the end either for good or ill came soon.