It is by no means true that all direct questions on the part of the sick must be directly and fully answered. For example, suppose the patient asks the physician, “Do you think on the whole that I shall recover”—a question that is sometimes asked under very embarrassing circumstances. If the physician thinks that he will probably not recover, he has no right to say to him that he will, for this would be falsehood. But he has a right, and it is his duty if he thinks it for the good of the patient, to withhold his opinion from him, if he can do it without falsehood or equivocation. He may say to him something like this: “It is difficult to decide that question. Perhaps it is not proper for me at this stage of your case to attempt to do it. You are very sick, and the issue of your sickness is known only to God. I hope that remedies will do so and so (pointing out somewhat the effects ordinarily to be expected) but I cannot tell.” Something of this kind, varied according to the nature of each case, especially in the amount of hope communicated, it is perfectly consistent with truth and good faith to say; and very often when more is said, even in very dangerous cases, the physician goes beyond the limits which infinite wisdom has thought best to set to his knowledge. It is very common, as the reader has already seen in the preceding chapter, for persons to recover, particularly in cases of acute disease, when the physician had supposed that they would die. This fact should make him somewhat cautious in giving definite opinions to the sick in relation to the probable final result of their sickness. CHAPTER XVIII. MORAL INFLUENCE OF PHYSICIANS.