As this is not often to be instantly expected, and many tedious hours frequently intervene between the _hope_ and _execution_, it will be necessary (exclusive of your periodical consolations to the patient’s inspiring resignation) you address yourself to the passions and foibles of the gossips, with whom you will in general be too numerously attended, and whose clamours upon many occasions are not easily to be subdued.—Notwithstanding this, the good opinions and recommendations of these motley visitors (of all ages and constitutions) are the very materials to form the foundation of _report_, upon which the superstructure of your reputation and future practice is to be raised.—Although _gravity_, even to a certain degree of _solemnity_, is a characteristic of your professional practice, yet there are times when you must unavoidably come forward to enliven the _good ladies_ with a specimen of your volubility, and variegate the natural extremities of pain with the applicable insinuations of mirth. Jocular inuendoes and double entendres are not only expected, but courted in the intervals of ease, or, as the good women generally term it, “when the business stands still.” The introduction of the tea-table and the joke are always considered equally promoters of mirth and the delivery; the practitioner is expected to be well stocked with the most fashionable recitals of _seduction_, _rapes_, _fornication_, and _adultery_, which, if well told, and applicably introduced, insures him to a certainty the future interests of his company. It will be absolutely necessary for you to fall into all the opinions of the table, except the glass of brandy repeatedly pressed upon you by the _nurse_ (as a specific, or grand arcana, for every ill) with the very expressive plea of its not doing you _any harm_; and “besides, Sir, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”