Answer

Do you not unjustly charge and blame yourself for what was not really your fault or neglect? How far you are chargeable in this case will best appear by comparing the circumstances you are now in with those you were in when your relation was only arrested by sickness, and it was uncertain to you what your duty and best course was.

Possibly you had observed so many perish in physicians' hands, and so many recover without them, that you judged it safer for your friend to be without those means than to be endangered by them.

Or if diverse methods were prescribed and urged, and you now see your error in preferring what was most improper and neglecting what was more safe and likely — yet as long as it did not so appear to your understanding at that time, and you followed the best light you had to guide you, it would be most unjust to charge the fault upon yourself for choosing the course that then seemed best, whether it was so in itself or not.

To be angry with yourself for doing or omitting what was then done or omitted according to your best discretion and judgment — because you now see it by the light of the outcome to be otherwise than you did before — is to be troubled that you are but human, or that you are not as God, who alone can foresee issues and outcomes. It is to be troubled that you acted as all rational creatures are bound to do: according to the best light they have at the time and season of action.