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THE MEDICAL CONFIDENCE GAME.

Mr. Punchinello has lately received a medical publication, in which there are some editorial remarks concerning the relations between physicians and their patients.  The latter are exhorted to place all confidence in their medical advisers, for, otherwise, there can be no harmonious action between them.  This is all very well, and Mr. PUNCHINELLO thinks that if anything in this world should be the subject of sacred confidences, it should be the revelations of the sick-room.  But, after reading the reports of the various cases which are detailed in this publication, his faith in the advisability of confiding in one’s doctor was somewhat shaken.  For instance, when he read that “Miss ANNA P-----, aged 25, of blonde complexion and apparent good health, residing near Jefferson avenue and Sixty-eighth street, had been subject for years to convolutions of the cerebral hemispheres, and had been obliged at various times to submit to partial amputations of horn-like excrescences on the divisions of her manual extremities,” Mr. PUNCHINELLO was of opinion that this young lady, who could be easily recognized from the hints (?) of her name and residence, might possibly object to the announcement, to all her friends and acquaintances, that she had cerebral hemispheres, and still more to the fact that they were convoluted.  But this dreadful truth is published, under the merest film of concealment of her identity, to the whole world, and her physical condition and subsequent surgical treatment may be town-talk for the rest of her life.  Where is the “sacred confidence” here?

There are dozens of similar cases in the publication referred to, and medical journals are, in general, full of them.

Will it therefore be wondered at if we don’t want all the world to know, every time we call in a doctor, that we may have a “parenchyma of the lung,” or a “sub-conjunctival cellular tissue,” that we will begin some day to insist as much upon medical honor as medical ability?  Mr. PUNCHINELLO thinks not.

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“FIAT LUX.”

We learn that our Third Assistant Postmaster-General has been indisposed for some days, owing to his excessive labor in breaking envelope contracts.  Why does the Postmaster-General allow his subordinates thus to overwork themselves?  We wish he would shed a REAY of light on the subject.

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SCIENCE AND ENDURANCE.

When people undertake any thing in the cause of Science, or indeed in any other cause, they might as well do their best while they have a chance.  This is an axiom of social economy which is presented, gratis, to the world.

Now, the three scientific men who intend passing the winter on the top of Mount Washington, might certainly find some other manner of spending the cold months in the interests of science which would be much more difficult and disagreeable.  They expect to be snowed up at the Tip-top House, from December until March, and will spend their time in a room lined with felt, where they will burn twenty tons of coal during their sojourn.