with me
for expressing such an opinion; even my brother, although it relieved
him of the odium of a great crime, was as annoyed as the rest. But by
twelve o'clock that morning one of the Spaniard's friends was attacked
similarly, and the very people who had been most angry with me a few
hours previously, came to me now eager for advice. There was no doctor
in Cruces; the nearest approach to one was a little timid dentist, who
was there by accident, and who refused to prescribe for the sufferer,
and I was obliged to do my best. Selecting from my medicine chest--I
never travel anywhere without it--what I deemed necessary, I went
hastily to the patient, and at once adopted the remedies I considered
fit. It was a very obstinate case, but by dint of mustard emetics,
warm fomentations, mustard plasters on the stomach and the back, and
calomel, at first in large then in gradually smaller doses, I
succeeded in saving my first cholera patient in Cruces.

For a few days the terrible disease made such slow progress amongst us
that we almost hoped it had passed on its way and spared us; but all
at once it spread rapidly, and affrighted faces and cries of woe soon
showed how fatally the destroyer was at work. And in so great request
were my services, that for days and nights together I scarcely knew
what it was to enjoy two successive hours' rest.

And here I must pause to set myself right with my kind reader. He or
she will not, I hope, think that, in narrating these incidents, I am
exalting my poor part in them unduly. I do not deny (it is the only
thing indeed that I have to be proud of) that I _am_ pleased and
gratified when I look back upon my past life, and see times now and
then, and places here and there, when and where I have been enabled to
benefit my fellow-creatures suffering from ills my skill could often
remedy. Nor do I think that the kind reader will consider this feeling
an unworthy one. If it be so, and if, in the following pages, the
account of what Providence has given me strength to do on larger
fields of action be considered vain or egotistical, still I cannot
help narrating them, for my share in them appears to be the one and
only claim I have to interest the public ear. Moreover I shall be
sadly disappointed, if those years of life which may be still in store
for me are not permitted by Providence to be devoted to similar
usefulness. I am not ashamed to confess--for the gratification is,
after all, a selfi