ained, for all his medicine was to
be taken in alcohol.

I stated to the parents the probable issues--that unless the child
possessed more than ordinary tenacity of life, it must ultimately sink
under the load it was compelled to sustain. But to our great
surprise--certainly my own--it survived; and, though it was suspended
for weeks between life and death, it finally recovered.

The most mortifying circumstance of all was, that this miserable mongrel
of a man had the credit of curing a child that only survived because it
was tough and strong enough to resist the destructive tendency of two
broadside fires--mine and his own. But medical men are compelled to put
up with a great many things which, of course, they would not prefer.
They must take the world as it is--as the world does the corps of
physicians. They must calculate for deductions and drawbacks; and what
they calculate on, they are pretty sure to experience. But, like other
men with other severe trials, they have their reward.

CHAPTER XLVI.

DYING OF OLD AGE, AT FIFTY-EIGHT.

Within the usual limits assigned me in the daily routine of my
profession, but on its very verge, there resided an individual of much
general reputation for worth of character, but of feeble constitution
and cachetic or deranged habits, for whom as well as for his numerous
family I had frequently prescribed.

He was at length, one autumn, unusually reduced in health and strength,
and I was again sent for. There was evidently very little of real
disease about him, and yet there was very great debility. All his bodily
senses were greatly deranged, and all his intellectual faculties
benumbed. His internal machinery--his breathing, circulation, and
digestion--was all affected; but it seemed more the result of debility
than any thing else. There was no violence or excess of action anywhere,
except a slight increase of the circulation.

The man was about fifty-eight years of age. Had he been ninety-eight or
even eighty-eight, I should have had no difficulty in understanding his
case. I should have said to myself, "Nature, nearly exhausted by the
wear and tear of life, is about to give way;" or in other words, "The
man is about to did (?die) of mere old age." But could he have been thus
worn out at the age of fifty-eight?

I gave him gentle, tonic medicine, but it did not work well. Without
increasing his strength, it increased his tendencies to fever. Yet, as I
well knew, depl