Let me not be understood, that I would have the friends of a patient make no inquiries at all of the physician in relation to the case. His intercourse with them should be candid and free, and the intelligent and honorable physician wishes it to be so. All that I claim is, that the practitioner should not be _harrassed_ with inquiries, and especially with such scrutiny, and such expressions of doubt as to the effect of remedies, as shall indicate their lack of confidence in the treatment, and therefore tend to destroy his own confidence in it. The physician knows, and for the most part should be left to judge, how much ought to be communicated to the friends of a patient in relation to his case. Neither let me be understood to mean, that physicians are afraid to have their practice watched and scanned. Every honorable and intelligent practitioner is willing that his treatment of any case be scanned most thoroughly, but he would prefer that it should be done by _skilful_ eyes. The friends of the patient should always remember, that they have not sufficient knowledge of the human system, and of the effects of agents upon it, to appreciate properly the workings of disease, and the operation of remedies; and they should therefore be careful not to put themselves in the attitude of _clinical_ critics—a station for which none but a physician is really fitted. The physician himself is in constant danger of making wrong inferences, on account of the complicated character of the system, and the various circumstances which therefore modify the operation of agents brought to bear upon it—even he, prepared as he is by study and well-weighed experience to observe accurately, is obliged to sift well the evidence in regard to the effects of remedies, in order to avoid mistake in his conclusions. How much more then should _they_ be cautious in the inferences which they draw, who have never studied the human frame, and who have had but little experience of the treatment of disease. And yet many make no scruple in forming the most decided opinions of the practice of physicians, in every case of which they have any knowledge, however limited, and in proclaiming those opinions with all the authority of an oracle. The practitioner is sometimes so much harrassed by these meddlers that he is in danger of mixing up with the measures of his practice expedients to satisfy or foil their officiousness—a compound which brings no benefit to the patient. The attention and the skill of the physician should be _concentrated_ upon one object—the proper treatment of the case before him. And the expenditure of his ingenuity, in using feints and practising concealments, to avoid a collision with the whims and prejudices of by-standers, impairs this concentration to the injury of the patient, and that sometimes a _fatal_ injury.