It is often said that if the physician, on the whole, taking into view all the circumstances of the case, thinks that a patient is going to die, he ought frankly to tell him so. The considerations which I have presented are, I trust, sufficient to convince the reader that this is by no means true. Shall the physician, I ask, add to all the depressing agencies which are bearing down the patient the appalling idea of death, and thus lessen, perhaps destroy, the possibility of his recovery? Shall he, in the struggle between life and death, give his influence in any way on the side of death? When the powers of life are sinking, and the life-giving fluid circulates but feebly in the extremities of the system, and is accumulating in the larger blood vessels and in the heart itself, threatening every moment to stop its faint throbbings, shall he, while he administers the cordial, defeat its effect, by holding up to the eye of his patient the grim visage of death, to oppress the vital forces and curdle the blood in its channels? Shall he not rather pour into the mind the cheering influence of hope, and thus aid the cordial in reviving the expiring energies of the system, and in stimulating the heart and the whole circulation into a freer action? Let me be fully understood on this point. Far be it from me to justify the wide departure from truth, of which some are guilty at such times. Giving utterly false assurances to the patient is a very different thing from merely exciting the hope in his mind to such a degree as the case may allow, that the remedies will produce the desired relief. The latter can be consistently done by the upright and high-minded practitioner, but the former is to be expected only in the ignorant pretender, and the dishonorable and unprincipled physician. The quack always gives assurances of a cure to those whom he undertakes to dupe; for, besides being incompetent to estimate the degree of danger in any case, he is unable to inspire confidence in his measures except by a strong appeal to the hopes of the patient. And some physicians imitate the quack in this particular. They are in the habit of exciting unwarrantably the hopes of the sick for their own selfish ends. By so doing they occasionally retain under their care patients who would otherwise pass into the hands of some one else; and they also get possession of some cases, in relation to which their more honest and honorable brethren have not found themselves warranted in giving any positive encouragement. But, though occasional advantage may result from this course to the physician, and sometimes even to the sick themselves, yet on the whole the honest course is truly the politic one.