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and I had to bring him into the hospital, where he slipped into chronic cardiac decompensation. There was very little to do for him and it was frustrating and embarrassing to me to come around ^'each day' and go over his chest and heart, knowing as I did that he was a vascular wreck and that the best will in the world was helpless before such an extreme condition. But one day I happened to meet his three-to-eleven nurse as she was getting off the bus to go to work. I asked her whether she could think of anything that I could to help her keep him comfortable. "Yes, doctor," she answered, 'There is one thing more that I want to ask you to do for my patient, and that is that you stop by to see him in the late afternoon when you leave your office." "But you know I always make rounds in the morning and I go over him very carefully then." "Yes, of course I know that. But I have noticed that you see him late in the day, if you stop around six even if you just sit in the chair beside the bed for a few minutes and chat with him, or maybe take his blood pressure, he feels better and then I am able to make him comfortable and he goes to sleep before the night nurse comes on at eleven. Try to do it for him, doctor if you're not too busy. He knows he's slipping and that there isn't much to be done. He's a good patient and he's really very brave, but he gets depressed as it begins to get dark, and it reassures him to have you come to see him."

So I used to go back to the hospital in the late afternoon or the early evening, with some minor professional pretext, and then we would chat for a few minutes until I could see the apprehensiveness wear down a bit." "How long did you do that?" "Oh, two or three weeks, I suppose. But we built up something between us that was warm and compassionate, and night nurse called me one night to report that he had slipped out. But to get back to your question about the woman who wanted the tonic: no, I wouldn't say that there was anything really