Slight causes, therefore, which would produce little or no effect upon the mind of one in firm health, may affect strongly the mind of a sick man. A single example will suffice. The patient was sick with typhus fever. He had been very much deranged, and great care had been taken to guard against any excitement, which might act injuriously upon him. He was now getting better, and his mind had become calm and clear, though still, like his body, it was very weak. A friend came in one morning as usual to inquire about him. He knew that all visitors had been prohibited from going into the sick room, but he wished very much to see his friend, and, as he had an opportunity, he looked in through the door, as it chanced to be a little open. The dull eye of the sick man saw him dimly, and he at once became as much affected as if he had seen a dreadful vision. His distempered fancy conjured up ideas of a painful character, which remained upon his mind for a week, and endangered as well as delayed his convalescence. This incident leads me to remark that physicians find great difficulty in securing a due degree of quietness in the sick room. I use the word quietness in its widest sense. I do not mean the avoidance of noise merely, but of all improper excitement. Visiting is generally a nuisance in the chamber of sickness. Multitudes of lives are continually sacrificed to curiosity and mistaken kindness. The tattling circles that gather round the fireside of the sick room, and retail their mixtures of medical lore, and slander, and hair-breadth escapes, and wonderful cures, often inflict torture upon the shattered nerves of the poor patient, and that torture sometimes, I have not a doubt, ends in death, when a recovery might otherwise have taken place.