f what Dr. Dunglison, the
physiologist, would call "rebellious" mixtures. I do not wonder, in
truth, that he occasionally sickened. The wonder with me is, that he did
not sicken and die long before he did. And though the blow that finished
his perilous mortal career, was doubtless inflicted by my own hand, I do
not hesitate to say that his "housekeeper" had nearly half destroyed him
before I was called.

It was a midsummer night, when the messenger came across an intervening
field, and aroused me from my slumbers with the intelligence that Mr. M.
was very sick, and wanted to have me come and see him immediately.
Although it was fully twelve o'clock, and I had been so fully occupied
during the preceding evening, that I had but just crawled into bed and
begun my slumbers, I was instantly on my feet, and in about twelve
minutes at the bedside of the sick man.

He had been affected with a bowel complaint, as it appeared, for several
days, during which his wife, who was one of those conceited women who
know so much, in their own estimation, that nobody can teach them any
thing, had dosed him with various things, such as were supposed to be
good for the blood, or the stomach, among which was brandy and loaf
sugar. Now his bowels, though they were inflamed, might have borne the
sugar; but the brandy was a little too much for them. They had endured
it for a time, it is true, but had at length yielded, and were in a
worse condition than when she began her treatment. And what was worse,
her alcoholic doses, frequently "inflicted," had heated the circulatory
apparatus, and even the whole system, into a burning fever.

It needed no very active imagination, in such circumstances, to make
out, at least in prospect, a very "hard case." And as he who has a giant
foe to contend with, arms himself accordingly, I immediately invoked the
strongholds of the Materia Medica for the strongest doses which it could
furnish, and these in no measured or stinted quantity. In short, I
attacked the disease with the most powerful agents of which I could
avail myself.

I will not trouble the non-professional reader with the names of the
various and powerful drugs which were laid under contribution in this
trying and dangerous case, and which were most assiduously plied. It is
sufficient, perhaps, to say that on looking over my directions--fairly
written out as they were, and laid on a small stand near the
sick-bed--you might have discovered that ha