But it is not merely the diversion of mind, attendant upon change of scene, that benefits the invalid, but his release from those mental associations, that have so tenaciously connected themselves with his sickness, has an important influence. The place where he has spent wearisome days and nights of pain and restlessness and languor, must necessarily have unpleasant associations connected with it. These hinder, and in some cases even prevent convalescence; and when he casts them off, he feels that he has rid himself of a great burden, and as he goes on his course with a light heart, a fresh impulse is given to the vital powers of his body, making him to feel, as he says that he does, like a new man. The mind of the sick man sometimes gets into a fixed, unvaried state, with one settled cast to its ideas. The tendency of this is to make the diseased condition of body to remain fixed also. It is important, therefore, to alter this mental state—to break up this unvarying train of thought and feeling. There are different ways of doing this in the different cases that present, and the physician must judge as to the most proper mode of effecting the object in each case. I will give a few cases as illustrations. A patient who had been very sick, but who had recovered from the severity of her attack, and who was in a fair way for getting well, remained precisely in the same condition for some time. Her mind was in a fixed state of gloom, marked by a perfectly unvaried expression of countenance. Her friends had tried in every way to make her cheerful, but it was in vain, for the simple reason that all their attempts to do so were obvious. I knew that she had naturally a lively sense of the ludicrous, and therefore, after getting her somewhat off her guard by some incidental conversation, I then, with an air of perfect carelessness, uttered something which I thought would be very apt to hit her mirthfulness, as the phrenologists term it. It did so, and a smile kindled up at once upon her sad countenance. The spell was now fairly broken. She speedily regained her wonted cheerfulness, and the load being cast off, she went straight on in the bright road of convalescence. In this case it was but a small thing, after all, that turned the current of thought and feeling, and the means which had already been used, most persons would suppose, were much better calculated to do it. All direct and palpable efforts to make the gloomy invalid cheerful, are almost always unsuccessful; and yet it is such efforts that are most commonly made use of by the friends of the sick.