I cannot forbear here to notice one thing, which often exerts a bad influence upon the mind of the child in sickness. It is the habit which many people have of threatening their children, when in health, with sending for the doctor to bleed them, or to give them some bitter medicine, as a punishment for their misdeeds. The inevitable tendency of this is to increase the mental depression and agitation which disease produces, by the gloomy associations which are thus necessarily attached to sickness in the mind of the child. The physician should never be held up as a bugbear to children, but should uniformly be spoken of in their presence in such terms, that when he visits them in sickness they may rejoice to see him, both as a friend and as one who is to bring them relief. There is no doubt that many a child is seized with an ill-defined terror, when the physician is called in, and thinks of him only as some dreadful monster that cuts off children’s ears, and gashes their flesh almost for sport. The effect of such a feeling on the weakened and agitated nerves is always injurious and undoubtedly is sometimes fatally so. One may get some adequate idea of the feelings of children under such circumstances, by imagining himself, in a state of weakness and disease, to be visited by an incarnate demon, who has both the power and the disposition to torment him. I am anxious to impress most faithfully the mind of the reader with the importance of giving rest to the mind in sickness. I have already remarked on the extent and the intimacy of the union between the mind and the body. It is never to be forgotten in the chamber of sickness, that the mind not only is not by itself, alone and independent, but that it is not connected with sound nerves, but acts upon a deranged body, and is acted upon by it, through the multitude of nervous filaments, which, scattered everywhere, are receiving impressions at every point, and transmitting them to the mind. If, therefore, the mind, thus disturbed by disease, be at the same time troubled by causes applied directly to it, the result must be a reaction from the mind through the nerves upon the disease itself. The mental and the bodily irritations must increase each other. It is then just as important to withhold all irritating causes from the mind, as from the diseased organ. For example, if the brain be inflamed, that inflammation may be aggravated as certainly by exciting the mind, as it would be by the administration of any stimulant to the body. In either case the same result occurs—the brain is stimulated—the only difference is in the channel through which it comes. And it is the duty of the physician to shut out the irritation from one channel, as much as from the other. When the eye is inflamed, one part of the curative means is to exclude the light, because the light, by exciting the nerve of sight, would increase the inflammation. But the action of the mind is as really connected with the brain and nervous