There are some very timorous writers who will not even allow the subject to be discussed. They think it irritates their readers and so push it aside with all their strength. Or else they take shelter behind their conscience, which is presumably the only judge of their actions. But the greater part of them have an opinion. They invoke humanity as if it were some new god, who requires lies and demands cowardice. “Nothing must be told the patient which is not cheering,” one of them informs us. “It is charitable to leave a light of hope till the very end,” says a second. A third expounds this maxim: “It is no one’s duty or right to tell a patient that he is lost.” And M. Vaulair, a professor of the University of Liège, declares that when the science of medicine is powerless, its most pressing duty is to give the unhappy one who believes in it the help of a lie. All except one are agreed in maintaining that the patient, the principal person interested, has no right to hear the truth. Must this truth be told to the family circle? Yes, up to a certain point. One must try to avoid giving pain to a wife, to children, to a father or a mother, who might be overwhelmed by the blow. Tact, prudence, reserve, moderation, hints, counsels, allusions, such are the varied stock-in-trade of the doctor in a case of this kind. He chooses a distant relative, strong and courageous, to whom he gently breaks the news, so as to make sure that he will not succumb to the shock. This relative can do what he likes about the matter. There is nothing more to be said; the family has been warned. A brave man knows the secret, it will be well kept. The doctor is the sole judge in the choice of this confidant. The important thing is that it must not be a near relative, who might be frightened. These doctors are tactful people. We believed them armed against grief, impassive, indifferent, brutal. How mistaken we were about them! What apologies we owe them! They are as gentle as little girls, as compassionate as sisters of mercy. They could not inflict pain without suffering themselves. And when the patient is dying they look for the most distant relative, the hardest and toughest, to confide to him stealthily that a mortal man is about to die.