Some are disposed to restrict physicians in regard to the medicines which they shall give. While the practitioner should avoid a useless war with the notions and caprices of his employers, and should sometimes even yield to them in unessential matters, it is ordinarily not only compromising his own dignity and independence, but is doing an absolute injury to the patient, to make any concessions on this point. The omission of some remedy or measure, in obedience to prejudice, may prove very injurious, and even in some cases fatal. As a general rule, therefore, the physician should claim his right to pursue his own course, independent and untrammeled. He, and he alone, is responsible for the proper management of the case before him, and his rights are certainly commensurate with his responsibility, and should not be interfered with. But those who make medicine a trade, and who care more for popularity and patronage than they do for the interests of science, or the welfare of the sick, often submit, as a matter of policy, to this interference with their rights. They will do anything to satisfy their employers. They will, for example, pursue the homœopathic mode of practice, if it be desired, and stoop to the farce of infinitesimal globules. They must despise themselves for so doing, and deserve to be despised by others. The frequency of a physician’s visits[37] should for the most part be left to his own judgment; for if he is not to be trusted in relation to this matter, he had better be dismissed, and another employed in his place. The conscientious physician is often much embarrassed by the complaints of his patients on this point. Some complain that his visits are too frequent, and others that they are not enough so. The attendance of the physician is sometimes discontinued too soon for the welfare of the patient, from motives of delicacy, where this fault-finding is practised. And, on the other hand, the extreme frequency of visits, which is sometimes required of the practitioner, especially by the wealthy, is in many cases injurious. For example, it may impair the mental influence, which it is important that the physician should maintain over his patient, or it may impose upon him almost a necessity to use too much medication, or to make too frequent changes in his course of practice in the case.