The undue reliance which is placed upon positive medication is also seen in the disposition, which is so very common, to demand of the physician, that he shall be doing something all the time to overcome the disease. They who make this demand, do not reflect, that in the warfare with disease, as well as in every other warfare, there are times to do, and _times also to rest from doing_. In some cases, indeed, there are periods when it would be certain death to the patient to employ any positive agencies of any amount, of power. It was the remark of a shrewd old physician, who was often found fault with for giving so little medicine, that it takes as much knowledge to know _what not to do_, as it does to know what to do? This is an important truth; and I have not a doubt that, in the practice of every physician, who is disposed to give much medicine, sickness often results in death in really curable cases, simply because he did not know what _not_ to do, and therefore did what he ought to have left undone. And yet those who drug their patients freely, are more apt to satisfy the mass of the community, than those who place less reliance upon positive medication. The friends of persons who have died, often remark, as a matter of consolation, that they are sure enough was done, that no means of relief that was suggested was left untried, &c., not seeming to dream that it was possible that too much was done. It appears sometimes to be the idea of the friends of the sick, that one remedy after another must be tried, in order to overcome the disease, until the effectual one is found; and that all the remedies which fail in this trial, simply fail, and do no positive harm. Accordingly, when any grave case occurs, they are disposed to call in many physicians, one after another, with the idea that “one may think of something that another did not.” And they are satisfied with no one who is thus called in, unless he recommend to the attending physician some medicine or measure, that has not yet been tried in the case. If he recommend the lessening of some medicine in quantity, or the discontinuance of it, this does not satisfy such persons, though the change may be of so great importance, that it may be justly considered as an entirely new course of treatment—as really new as it would be, if a new set of remedies were adopted. It is a very common idea, that medicines have a sort of natural relation to disease. This idea appears in different forms. Some talk about disease as if it were a palpable thing, which is to be attacked, to be hit, to be driven out, or drawn out from its hiding place; and they suppose that there are certain remedies which are calculated to effect these different objects. They therefore speak of the drawing off of “bad matter,” by a blister, and of the “bad blood,” which is taken from one by bleeding, as if the disease itself in palpable shape, was abstracted in these ways from the system.