onium; but how, I said to myself, can
this be? I certainly did not give him an overdose. Besides, as I well
knew, the effects, so long as I remained with him, had been decidedly
favorable.

The mystery was soon revealed. On finding himself much better, soon
after my departure, he had resorted again to the stramonium bottle,
which in my haste and contrary to my usual practice, I had left within
his reach. The result was a degree of delirium that had alarmed his
friends and induced them to send for me.

By means of careful and persevering management, a partial recovery soon
took place, though a train of incidental evils followed which it is not
necessary here to enumerate. The patient was one of those ignorant and
selfish individuals on whom a permanent cure can rarely be effected.

This circumstance taught me one important lesson which ought to have
been impressed on my mind long before. It was, not to leave medicine of
any kind within reach of my patients or their friends. In many an
instance, medicine thus left has been taken by others, under the belief
that since it operated favorably in the case for which it had been
prescribed by the physician, it would do so in another case which was
vainly supposed to be just like it, when, in truth, it was not at all
similar.

To the custom of keeping medicine in the house, of any sort, I am
equally opposed, and for similar reasons. There will generally be time
enough to send for it when its presence is really needed. Such at least
is the fact, ninety-nine times in a hundred. And as a set-off against
the fact of its being thus useful once in a hundred times, we have to
acknowledge the multiplied dangers to which we are exposed, of using it
without prescription, and to which we are otherwise exposed by having it
constantly before us in our houses.

CHAPTER XLIX.

CURING CANCER.

Theodore, a laborious young man, came to me one day, saying, "I am
afraid I have a cancer on one side of my nose, and I wish you would look
at it." Accordingly I made a careful examination of the sore, taking
care to give him a little pain, and, at the same time, as a most
indispensable ingredient, to look "wondrous wise;" after which the
following conversation, in its essentials, took place between us:--

"What makes you suspect this sore to be a cancer?"

"There are various reasons. Many of the neighbors think it to be so.
Then, too, it has a very strong resemblance to the cancer on Mr