I call to mind an instance in which I was able to make this appeal with the most marked good effect. The patient was a lady who was in a great state of alarm in regard to the probable result of her sickness. She was indeed very sick, but there was good reason to hope that remedies would relieve her. At the same time I feared that the depressing effect of this state of alarm, if it should continue, would prove a serious obstacle to her recovery. But as I expressed to her the confident hope that she would get well, she said to me, ‘Physicians always talk in this way, and you do not really mean as you say. I shall die, I know that I shall die.’ I had been the physician of the family for many years, during which time they had gone through some trying scenes of sickness. Alluding to all this, I asked her if she could look back and call to mind a single instance in which I had not dealt candidly and frankly with her. She allowed that she could not. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘believe me _now_; I _am_ in earnest; I do believe, and confidently, too, that you will recover.’ The tears were at once wiped away. Cheerfulness, the cheerfulness of hope, lighted up her countenance and the case went on to a speedy and full recovery. Every day we see evidence of the fact that so large a proportion of the medical profession practice deception upon the sick, that the profession, as a whole, has to a greater or less degree the imputation fastened upon it. Indeed patients often, as a matter of course, make the distinction between the obligations to professional veracity, and those of the man, as a man, in his ordinary intercourse; and the physician, who has an established reputation for the strictest veracity everywhere else but in the sick chamber, has there the suspicion of deception put upon him; and it is supposed to be no imputation of which he should complain, because deception is allowed here almost by general permission. For this reason, whatever of frankness and honesty there may be in our intercourse with the sick, often fails to produce the effect intended, in part at least if not wholly. And this result follows just in proportion to the extent to which deception is made use of in the profession.