uxion, 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 advanced
years hangs upon this wall, long the honored Professor of Theory and
Practice in this Institution, of whom I shall say something in this
Lecture. Our venerated Teacher studied assiduously afterwards in the
great London Hospitals, but I think he used to quote his "old Master" ten
times where he quoted Mr. Cline or Dr. Woodville once.

When I compare this direct transfer of the practical experience of a wise
man into the mind of a student,--every fact one that he can use in the
battle of life and death,--with the far off, unserviceable "scientific"
truths that I and some others are in the habit of teaching, I cannot help
asking myself whether, if we concede that our forefathers taught too
little, there is not--a possibility that we may sometimes attempt to
teach