It is important in the management of the sick, not only that this fact should be kept clearly and steadily in view by the physician; but that it should be understood by the community, so that the efforts of the physician may not be thwarted, as they often are, by the attendants and friends of the sick, when he aims to act upon bodily disease by impressions made on the mind. And I refer not in this remark merely to impressions of this kind where the attempt to produce them is so palpable that the most careless observer would perceive it, but to all those influences which the physician is exerting upon the minds of the sick, in his daily intercourse with them. In truth, everything that he says and does in the sick room, is to be regarded as really a medicine, and producing as real if not as manifest effects upon the state of the patient, as any of the drugs that he administers. It will be profitable, then, to the general reader, as well as to the medical man, to examine the influences which the mind and the body exert upon each other in sickness, the use which can be made of such influences in the cure of disease, and the abuse to which they are liable from the mismanagement of those who have the care of the sick. Before doing this, however, it may be both interesting and profitable to look at the connection which exists between the body and the mind. There are various figures used to illustrate this connection. The most common one is that in which the mind is spoken of as dwelling in the body as a habitation. In a certain sense this is true. This tabernacle of flesh, as the Bible aptly terms it, is, in its present state a habitation, which the mind is to leave in a short time, to return to it, however, at length, rebuilt and refitted in a more glorious, an incorruptible form, to dwell in it then forever. But this illustration of the mysterious connection of the mind with the body is but a _partial_ one—it does not express the extent nor the intimacy of that connection. The mind is not a mere dweller put into this habitation. Its union with it is not thus loose and easily severed. It is bound to its every nerve and fibre, so that the least touch of the body at any point affects the mind. Instead of being put into the body, it has, being thus interlaced, as we may say, fibre with fibre, grown with its growth, and strengthened with its strength. In the feebleness of infancy the mind is just as feeble as the body, and they both grow together up to the vigor and firmness of manhood, and both decline together in old age. So close is their union through all the stages of life, and so equally is each affected by the joys and sufferings of the other, that we might justly conclude that at death, when the tabernacle crumbles into dust, the mind falls with it never to rise again, had not a divine revelation told us that, indissoluble as this connection appears during life, almighty power will dissever it and release the soul from the