One circumstance, that makes the intercourse of the physician with his patients familiar and intimate, which I have as yet barely hinted at, merits a more particular notice. I refer to the sympathy which he has felt with them in their seasons of suffering, anxiety, and affliction. It has sometimes been said, that the physician, from his familiarity with scenes of distress, becomes unfeeling, and incapable of sympathizing with others. This may be true of him, if he from the first look at the sufferings of his fellow-men only as a source of emolument to himself. If at the onset he enthrones this perfectly selfish and therefore hardening principle in his bosom, he will of course become devoid of sympathy and benevolence. But if he does not this strange violence to his natural sympathies, but lets them flow out, as he goes forth on his daily errands of relief and mercy to high and low, to rich and poor, and especially if he be faithful to the poor who can give him nothing but their blessing and their prayers, his sympathy and kindness will be so often drawn out, and under such a variety of circumstances, that they will become more tender and active, instead of being blunted and repressed. True, he will not have that mawkish sensibility which vents itself in tears, and sighs, and expressions of pity, but stops short of action, or, if it ever reaches forth its hand, does it but fitfully, and with none of that steadiness so essential in giving relief and support to soul or body in its feebleness and suffering. If he ever had any of such romantic and unpractical sensibility, he has cast it off in his actual service in the fields of benevolence, into which his profession has necessarily led him. He has learned over and over, the lesson of _active_ sympathy. He has learned it often under circumstances of discouragement, and sometimes without even the show of gratitude being offered to him. He has learned it, I am glad to say, (and I say it with some tender recollections,) with signs of gratitude in his patients, which are not to be mistaken—with the blessing of those who were ready to perish, but who were saved by his timely and persevering exertions. He may appear to the casual observer to have merged the feelings of the man in those of the physician—to have surrendered his humanity to the cold and stern demands of science. He may seem to be devoid of sympathy, as he goes to work midst scenes of suffering, without a tear, or even a sigh, performing his duties with an unblanched face, a cool and collected air, and a steady hand, while all around are full of fear, and trembling, and pity. Yet there _is_ sympathy in his bosom, but it is _active_. It vents itself in the right way—in doing. There _is_ feeling there. It is not destroyed, but its manifestations are _under control_. It is from this power of control which he has acquired, that the physician or surgeon may appear to others to be utterly