is
unsafe. The feeble especially should guard themselves in this direction;
nor should those who may perchance at some future time be feeble,
despise the suggestion.

One important resolution was also made. This was never to use violent
efforts to induce perspiration. Such a course of treatment I saw
clearly, as I thought, must be contrary to the intentions of nature; and
time and further observation and experiment have confirmed me in this
opinion. There may of course be exceptions to the truth of such a
general inference; but I am sure they cannot be very numerous. What
though the forcing plan seems to have succeeded quite happily in my own
case? So it has in thousands of others. So might a treatment still more
irrational. Mankind are tough, and will frequently live on for a
considerable time in spite of treatment which is manifestly wrong, and
even without any treatment at all.

CHAPTER VIII.

LESSON FROM AN OLD SURGEON.

Five or six miles from the place of my nativity a family resided whom I
shall call by the name of Port. Among the ancestry of this family, time
out of mind, there had been more, or fewer of what are usually called
natural bone setters. They were known far and near; and no effort short
of miraculous would have been sufficient to shake the confidence which
ignorance and credulity had reposed in them.

One or two of these natural bone setters were now in the middle stage of
life, and in the full zenith of their glory. The name of the most
prominent was Joseph. He was a man of some acquired as well as inherited
knowledge; but he was indolent, coarse, vulgar, and at times profane.
Had it not been for his family rank and his own skill as a surgeon, of
which he really had a tolerable share, he would have been no more than
at best a common man, and occasionally would have passed for little more
than a common blackguard.

I was in a shop one day conversing with Capt. R., when Dr. Port came in.
"Capt. R., how are you?" was the first compliment. "Very well," said the
captain, "except a lame foot." "I see you have one foot wrapped up,"
said Dr. Port; "what is the matter with it?"--"I cut it with an axe, the
other day," said he, "very badly."--"On the upper part of the foot?"
said the doctor. "Yes, directly on the instep," said Capt. R. "Is it
doing well?"--"Not very well," he replied; "and I came into town to-day
partly to see and converse with you about it."--"Well, then, undo it and
let me ha