Sometimes fearful issues depend upon the decision of the physician. For instance, here is a case which has been going on for some time without giving much occasion for anxiety; but all at once it assumes a new aspect. A new set of formidable symptoms have come on, requiring an entire change in the treatment. A variety of perplexing questions now arise in the mind of the physician,—such as these. If the attempt be made to remove the new symptoms, how much reason is there to fear that that attempt will so affect the debilitated patient as to destroy life? Severe as the symptoms are, is there a probability that, if a mild course be pursued, the patient may weather the storm? Will he certainly die if the symptoms are left to go on without any attempt to arrest them? And if so, what measures will probably arrest them with the least amount of risk to the patient’s life? Such are some of the momentous questions which press upon the physician’s mind; and, though he would like time to give them a patient examination, he cannot have it; for there is necessity for immediate decision and action. The reader can plainly see, that in order to decide such questions under such circumstances properly, great comprehensiveness and concentration of thought, and a cool and clear judgment, are requisite; and that a mind of narrow views, and loose habits of observation and reasoning, must often fail to come to a right decision of them. Some, in such circumstances, amid all the uncertainty that beclouds this nice balancing of probabilities, will doubt and doubt, till the time in which anything effectual can be done is past by; and the patient dies without having a single intelligent effort put forth to save him. Others, in their confusion of ideas, pursue a vacillating course—at one moment inefficient, at another destructive; and no rational and steady plan is adopted. Others still, without waiting to consider the different questions which I have mentioned, see in the new group of symptoms nothing but a new enemy to be attacked, and plunge, at once, into the fight. A reckless course is entered upon, which must either kill or cure.