When set at liberty, this man willingly assisted Pinel in breaking the chains of his fellow prisoners; he became immediately calm, and even kind and attentive, and was ever afterwards the devoted friend of his deliverer. In an adjoining cell there were three Prussian soldiers, who had been many years in chains and darkness; through grief and despair they had sunk into a state of stupor and fatuity, the frequent result of similar treatment; they refused to be removed. Near to them was an old priest, harmless and patient, who fancied himself to be the Savior of the world. When taunted by the keepers, who used to tell him that, if he was Christ, he could break the heavy chains that loaded his hands, he replied with solemn dignity, _Frustra tentaris Dominum tuum_. After his release he got rid of his illusion, and recovered the soundness of his mind. Within a few days Pinel liberated fifty-three maniacs from their imprisonment. The result was beyond his hopes. Tranquility and harmony succeeded to tumult and disorder, and even the most ferocious madmen became more tractable. This took place in 1792; and the example of Pinel was followed in various parts of France. CHAPTER XVI. INFLUENCE OF HOPE IN THE TREATMENT OF DISEASE. I remember well that Dr. Jackson of Boston used to remark to the students, that the medical profession is, from the nature of its duties, a _cheerful_ profession. The physician has so much to do with suffering, disease, and death, that this assertion would at first view seem to be erroneous. But when it is considered that in the great majority of cases he is able to effect a cure, that in those which terminate in death he can generally give relief to suffering from time to time, and thus at least smooth the passage to the tomb, and that the number of sick whose diseases he can neither palliate nor cure is exceedingly small, we can see why it is that the physician is ordinarily so cheerful a man in his daily intercourse. The impressions of most persons on this subject are wrong, and for very obvious reasons. Out of their own immediate circle of relations and friends, they hear only of the severe cases of disease, and often only of those in which death is the result, and know but little, perhaps nothing, of the multitude of cases, here and there in every part of the community, which end in recovery.