, or, in other words, to set things right; and sometimes we
were led to indulge in hope. But the remissions of disease and of
suffering were only temporary, and were succeeded, in every instance, by
a worse condition of things than before. I called for sage medical
counsel, but all to no permanent purpose. Downward he tended, step by
step, and no human power or skill seemed likely to arrest his progress.

In this downward course his constitution held out--for he was by nature
exceedingly tenacious of life--till about the twenty-third day, when the
vital forces began to retreat. He died on the twenty-fifth.

One practical but general error deserves to be noticed, for want of a
better place, in this very connection. Notwithstanding the great
difficulty of convincing a person who habitually uses extra stimulants,
narcotics, or any medicinal agents, all the way from rum, opium, and
tobacco, down to tea, coffee, and saleratus, that they are injuring him
at all, as long as he does not feel very ill, yet it ought to be clearly
and fully known that every one who is thus addicted to unnatural habits,
and _being_ thus addicted is seized with disease of any kind and from
any cause whatever, is certain to have that disease with greater
severity than if his habits had been, from the first, perfectly correct
or normal. Nor is this all. Medical aid, whenever invoked under these
circumstances, is more questionable as to its good tendencies. No
medical man of any skill or observation but must feel, in such a case,
most painfully, the terrible uncertainty of that treatment of the living
machine which is quite enough so when the habits have been most
favorable, by being most correct.

One caution of quite another kind may be interposed here. My patient
above had neglected to call on me for several days in the beginning of
his disease, under the very general impression of ignorant people, that
if he called a physician he should certainly be severely sick; for if he
was not already very sick, any efforts to prevent disease would only
serve to make him so.

Now this is, as a general rule, a very great mistake. It would be much
more safe to call a physician very early, than to wait till Nature is so
much embarrassed and even crippled that we can place very little
reliance on her efforts. Worse still is it for the physician, when
called late, to load down the enfeebled system with medicine by way of
atoning for past neglects. Thousands have