I trust that it is now clear to the reader, that all interferences with the practice of the physician are inconsistent with the best management of the sick. They repress that freedom of thought and action, which is an essential element of success in the treatment of disease, as well as in everything else. Even when no interference is intended, the anxiety of friends is sometimes the cause of so much embarrassment to the physician, as to be detrimental to the welfare of the patient. And there is no doubt, that, in spite of all the care that is lavished by numerous friends upon the sick in the higher walks of life, they are often, from the cause above alluded to, treated with less skill and judgment than the miserably attended sick in the cheerless habitations of the poor. This may appear at first though rather paradoxical to the reader; but let us examine this point, and you will easily see the reasonableness of the assertion. I will suppose a case. A lady is sick under the care of her physician. Her husband and friends are exceedingly anxious in regard to the result of the case. They have many inquiries to make of the physician about her symptoms, his fears and hopes, the operation of medicines, &c. They ask him, perhaps, if he is not afraid that such a remedy will produce such an effect, and such an one such an effect; and they may even go so far as to attribute some unfavorable symptom to some medicine that has been administered. There are few physicians who are so independent, that they will not feel themselves embarrassed under such circumstances. The responsibility of an important case in itself occasions sufficient embarrassment, without adding to it by such a course. Napoleon, that shrewd observer of men, saw this in the case of his wife, and governed himself accordingly. He saw that there was danger, and that the physician was in a measure paralyzed by his sense of his responsibility. Instead of talking with him about the difficulties of the case, and expressing his apprehensions, he immediately said to him, “she is but a woman: forget that she is an empress, and treat her as you would the wife of a citizen of the Rue St. Denis.” This restored confidence to the physician; and his treatment of his royal patient was successful, when perhaps a timid course would have been fatal to her.