In the above remarks, I do not refer merely to the secrets which, either from choice, or necessity, are so often entrusted to the physician by his patients. But I refer to the confidential character which marks his _whole_ intercourse with them, extending to all the little nameless acts which makeup that intercourse. He enters the dwelling of the sick as if he were one of the family, and the very office that he is to perform disarms all formality, and pre-supposes intercourse of the most familiar character. The patient is to speak to him not of a foreign subject, nor of some one else, but of himself, of his own body, of its pains and ailments, and that too with sufficient minuteness to communicate an adequate knowledge of his case. In doing so, he calls into exercise not only the scientific acumen of the _physician_, but, mingled with this, the sympathy of the confidential _friend_. If he has been the physician of the family for any length of time, and has been with them in many scenes of suffering, ready to relieve, so far as in him lay the power to do it, this feeling of affectionate reliance is deep and ardent; so much so, that it is a severe trial to the sensitive mind to be obliged to consult a stranger, even though there be nothing in the case to disturb the most refined and scrupulous delicacy. Especially is this so when the patient is a female. In her case the confidence reposed is of the most sacred character. And shame be to the physician who dares to trifle with it—who dares to offend in any way the delicacy of a patient, whom necessity has placed in such near relationship to him. It is principally this relationship, which the physician holds to the mothers and daughters of the families upon which he attends, that introduces him, if he be a man of honor and principle, as the esteemed and loved friend into the very _bosom_ of those families.