n to
her mother: "Good-wife, Margaret hath somewhat profited, as she telleth,
by the goat's milk she hath taken night and morning. Do thou pluck a
maniple--that is an handful--of the plant called Maidenhair, and make
a syrup therewith as I have shewed thee. Let her take a cup full of
the same, fasting, before she sleepeth, also before she riseth from her
bed." And so they leave the house.

"What thinkest thou, Luke, of the maid we have been visiting?" "She
seemeth not much ailing, Master, according to my poor judgment. For she
did say she was better. And she had a red cheek and a bright eye, and
she spake of being soon able to walk unto the meeting, and did seem
greatly hopeful, but spare of flesh, methought, and her voice something
hoarse, as of one that hath a defluxion, with some small coughing from
a cold, as she did say. Speak I not truly, Master, that she will be well
speedily?"

"Yea, Luke, I do think she shall be well, and mayhap speedily. But it is
not here with us she shall be well. For that redness of the cheek is
but the sign of the fever which, after the Grecians, we do call the
hectical; and that shining of the eyes is but a sickly glazing, and they
which do every day get better and likewise thinner and weaker shall find
that way leadeth to the church-yard gate. This is the malady which the
ancients did call tubes, or the wasting disease, and some do name the
consumption. A disease whereof most that fall ailing do perish. This
Margaret is not long for earth--but she knoweth it not, and still
hopeth."

"Why, then, Master, didst thou give her of thy medicine, seeing that her
ail is unto death?"

"Thou shalt learn, boy, that they which are sick must have somewhat
wherewith to busy their thoughts. There be some who do give these tabid
or consumptives a certain posset made with lime-water and anise and
liquorice and raisins of the sun, and there be other some who do give
the juice of craw-fishes boiled in barley-water with chicken-broth,
but these be toys, as I do think, and ye shall find as good virtue, nay
better, in this syrup of the simple called Maidenhair."

Something after this manner might Master Giles Firmin have delivered his
clinical instructions. Somewhat in this way, a century and a half later,
another New England physician, Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, taught a
young man who came to study with him, a very diligent and intelligent
youth, James Jackson by name, the same whose portrait in his a