ome great thing--for great men though
some of them were, they were not great in matters pertaining to health
and disease. They were born, several of them, in the eighteenth
century.

At length the time for prescription and departure had arrived, and my
good brother and father of the lancet rose very deliberately, and said
with great gravity, "You will be obliged to stay in your room a few
days, and keep both your body and mind as quiet as possible. For the
most part, it will be well to maintain a recumbent position. For food,
use a little water gruel. In following this course, I think you will
very soon find yourself convalescent." Then, with a sort of stiff bow,
that every one who knew him could pardon in so excellent a man, he said,
"Good-morning, sir,--Good-morning, gentlemen;" and was making the best
of his way to the door of the chamber. "Will it not be needful for you
to call again?" I said to him. "I shall be most happy to call," said he,
"should it be necessary; but I doubt very much whether my advice will be
any farther required."

My friends were very much astonished that he did not prescribe active
medicine. "What can it mean?" they asked again and again. For myself,
too, I must confess that I was not a little disappointed. Not that I had
any considerable attachment to pills and pill boxes,--such a confidence
had gone by long before, as you know,--but I verily thought my
particular tendencies to pulmonary consumption demanded a little
tincture of digitalis, or something in the shape of strong medicine.

But the physician knew my theories, better than he knew the power of
that habit whose chains, in this respect, he had long ago escaped. For I
learned afterwards, much better than I then knew, that so feeble was his
faith in medicine, at least in all ordinary cases, that whenever the
intelligence of his patients would at all warrant it, he prescribed, as
he had for me, just nothing at all, but left every thing to be done by
Nature and good common-sense attendants. This was, in fact, just what he
attempted to do here. He doubtless supposed my friends were nearly as
well informed in the matter as I was; and that I was as fully
emancipated in practice as I was in theory.

"How much drugging and dosing might be saved," I said to myself, when I
came to reflect properly on the subject, "if mankind were duly trained
to place a proper reliance on Nature and Nature's laws, instead of
fastening all their faith on the