unintelligent, though well-intentioned
teachers. Lord Bacon and others have said, "A little knowledge is a
dangerous thing;" and in nothing is the remark more applicable than to
the first or pioneer knowledge of people on hygiene. From the very
nature of the case it must be so. I ought either to have protested
against the farm, _in toto_, or given such minute instructions that they
could not have been easily mistaken. But I had my reasons, at the time,
for the course I took, and I thought them quite sufficient. How easy it
is, in this world, to find cause for misgivings!

CHAPTER LXXXII.

SCARLATINA CURED BY LETTING ALONE.

At a certain season when scarlet fever was very prevalent among us, a
member of my family was attacked with it slightly, and, as it was
believed by almost everybody to be contagious, the case excited much
alarm. The fact that in persons of my friend's age, it had, during the
season, occasionally proved fatal, no doubt increased the apprehension
and alarm, and led to many anxious fears about the treatment. Those who
regarded my general method of treating disease as rather too "tame," and
who supposed themselves in special danger of "taking the disease," were
not only curious, but curiously inquisitive to know what I would do in
my own family, to meet this supposed terrible malady.

My first object was to quiet all fears, especially in the patient. It
would have been easy--comparatively so--to do this, had it not been for
the croakings of our neighbors. They told the sick person so many dismal
stories of persons of her age--she was in middle life--who had died of
scarlet fever, that it was not so easy to resist, wholly, the
impressions. The most resolute and determined are apt to yield, in such
circumstances.

However, we did the best we could. We endeavored not only to keep her
quiet in mind, but in body. All irregularities were carefully watched
and guarded against; not by giving medicine to prevent evil, real or
imaginary; not by prophylactics, as they are called; but by strictly and
carefully obeying all the laws pertaining to the human, physical frame,
so far as they were then understood.

It was one object to keep the patient cool,--not, of course, chilly; for
this would have been worse than a temperature a little too high. But
excess of heat, in its application to the surface, was dreaded as one
of the worst of evils; and no pains were spared in attempts to keep the
sick-room not