No one should enter the sick room from curiosity or from a mere vague desire to do good. Nothing but the actual prospect of doing good should prompt him to go there. Indeed, everything which interferes with the proper quiet of the sick should be most scrupulously avoided. It should always be remembered, that in many cases of disease, mental excitement may do as much harm as the excitement produced by stimulating medicines. And it is as much the business of the physician to direct in the management of this matter, as in the administration of remedies; for it has as real, if not as great a bearing on the recovery of the patient. Indeed, sometimes it is vastly more important than all the medicine that is given in the case. I call to mind a case which illustrates this last remark so strikingly, that I will state it as briefly as possible. A patient was taken sick, with some important business pressing upon his attention at the time of the attack. He was persuaded to dismiss it entirely from his thoughts for the time. He was soon relieved by the remedies that were used, and he was in a fair way for a recovery. He was, however, in such a state, that it was very important that he should be kept from all excitement, and as I saw that he was disposed to do the business now with some friend, whom he wished to have called in for the purpose, I told him and his family in plain terms the risk which he would run if he should pursue this course. He however disregarded my injunctions, and the consequence was that in the evening of the same day he was very sick, and in a few days died from disease in the brain, which was clearly induced by the mental excitement. If he had followed my directions as scrupulously in regard to this point as he did in regard to the medicines which were given, recovery instead of death would probably have been the result. Some in their anxiety to secure the quiet of the sick, go to an extreme, and give almost the silence of the grave to every sick room. They institute a sort of prison discipline, and shut out both the light of heaven and all cheerfulness of intercourse. The very means which they take to produce quietness, the stealthy step and the whisper, are apt to disturb the patient more than noise or excitement would do. Discretion should be exercised by the physician, and the friends of the patient should rely on him to direct this part of the management of the case, as well as that which is strictly medical. He must judge as to the degree and kind of excitement appropriate to the case, and direct in its application, for the same reason that he should, in a case of disease of the eye, direct as to the amount of light which should be admitted to it.