Intimate relation of physician to his patients. Mutual confidence. Abuse of confidence. Guilt of it, especially in case of females. Sympathy of the physician—active—grows constantly stronger and more tender. Self-control mistaken for want of feeling. Manifestations of feeling—surgical operation. Certain nervous effects erroneously supposed to be evidences of feeling. Sympathy of the physician a means of influence. Physician at home everywhere. Opportunity of studying every variety of character. Physicians often fail to exert the influence which these advantages enable them to do. Influence on moral questions. Temperance. Acting as a peace-maker. Influence of daily conduct—little hourly acts. Physician in sick room. Communion with the spirit in its most momentous hours. Physician’s great object to cure the patient—nothing should interfere with it. Cordial influence of hope. Little confidence to be placed in death-bed repentance and reformation. Opportunities of doing good in lingering chronic cases. Mode of doing it. Injudicious intercourse with the sick. In some cases duty clear—in others, doubtful. Conference between physician, clergyman, and friends. Opportunity of doing good in convalescence. Moral influence of the physician in his strictly-professional character. CHAPTER XIX. TRIALS AND PLEASURES OF A MEDICAL LIFE, 404 Great mental and bodily toil. Irregularity of life. No command over time. Exposure to causes of disease. Physicians a short-lived class. Compensation generally small. Medicine not a money-making business. Less obligation felt by many to pay physician than to pay others. Physician often obliged to see the quack and hobby-rider getting rich by their impostures. Facility with which the people are imposed upon, a great trial to the honorable practitioner. Especially so when imposition is practised by his brethren. Valuable lives sacrificed to ignorance and unskilfulness. Witnessing sad scenes. Mutual sympathy and confidence add in such cases to physician’s sorrow. Irreligion and vice at hour of death. Frequency of sad scenes in times of pestilence. Ingratitude of those on whom the physician has conferred favors. Services of faithful physician not to be measured by pecuniary considerations. Dismissing physician for frivolous or improper reasons. Not so much gratitude in the world as commonly supposed. Virtuous and vicious poor. Clergymen generally attended upon gratuitously. What, therefore, is due from them to our profession. Conduct of some of them. Want of respect to the medical profession, on the part of the community generally. Public ingratitude. _Pleasures of a medical life._ Medicine as a science, full of interest. Its intimate union with other sciences. Enthusiasm in its pursuit. All discoveries, however small, add to the capabilities of the medical art in relieving misery and prolonging life.