e English,
and by reprint also to the American public, erroneously reported it a
case of _measles_. How he could have made the mistake, I do not know, as
the word "Scharlachfieber" in German does not resemble "measles" at all,
the latter being called "Masern" in my mother-tongue; but the thought
that many a case, which had a bad issue, might have been treated, these
twenty-one years, after my method, and many a life might have been
saved, but for the mistake of C. C., has often distressed me.

[36] Nothing is more dangerous to the interest of an establishment,
where many people are promiscuously collected, than a case of contagious
disease, such as small-pox, scarlatina, measles, typhus, &c. I remember
a hydriatic establishment in Pennsylvania being broken up entirely, and
the physician deprived for a time of the means of subsistence, by his
honest and well-founded confidence in the hydriatic treatment of
small-pox, and by the generous steps he took in taking a friendless
patient, afflicted with that dreaded disease, to his own house, to cure
him. He anticipated the pleasure it would procure him to show how
quickly and how safely he would dispose of the case, and exulted in
being able to communicate the fact to his patients. Alas, he little
knew, how feeble their confidence in the water-cure was as yet, and how
much more they thought of their own safety, than of the water-cure,
their physician and the life and health of a poor destitute
fellow-creature. They all left him--part of them came to Florence--and
long before he had cured his small-pox patient, he had not one of his
old patients left to witness the cure! However impolitic it may appear,
I cannot but express my admiration of Dr. S.'s noble conduct on the
occasion, who proved himself not only an honest adherer to our excellent
mode of treatment, but also a kind and generous man, worthy of more
encouragement than he received at the time.

With that event before me and with a number of some thirty-five or forty
patients in the house, I, of course, tried to make them as easy as I
could, and confiding in the power of my treatment, sent my own two
children, _Paul_, about eight and a half, and _Eliza_, about four years
old, to play with the little scarlet-patient, to show how little I was
afraid of the disease. In doing so, I, at the same time, satisfied my
own heart, by insuring the possibility of treating my darlings myself
for scarlatina, which I might not be able