e. I was now fully convinced that I had taken the true
course, because, otherwise, my patient must, by this time, have become
worse. Accordingly, I persevered in my general let-alone plan for about
two weeks, when the patient fully recovered.

He was a slender boy, in the fifteenth year of his age, strongly
inclined, by inheritance, to disease of the chest and brain; and this
consideration, among others, led me to be extremely cautious about his
treatment. The greater the danger the greater the necessity that what is
done should be done right, or we shall defeat our own purposes.

But the most remarkable fact in relation to this very interesting case
is,--and it is chiefly for the sake of this fact that I have related the
story,--that more than forty-eight hours had passed, after the
occurrence of the accident, before it came into my mind that any thing
could, by possibility, be done for the chest, in the way of bleeding,
blistering, etc.,--so utterly irrational had this treatment, once so
fashionable, come to be regarded, both by myself and a few others. How
strange that I should not think of it in two whole days! Twenty years
before, I should not have dared to pass through the first twenty-four
hours, in such a case, without _thinking_, at least, of balsams and
mustard poultices and the whole paraphernalia of external treatment, to
say nothing of bleeding and blistering.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

MEDICAL VIRTUES OF SLEEP.

My own child, a boy nine or ten years of age, and somewhat inclined to
croup, was one evening wheezing considerably, and, as his mother
thought, was threatened with an immediate attack, either from this or
some other disease. Of course, there was not a little anxiety manifested
in the family on his account, and we were deliberating what to do with
him, when the late Dr. Shew, the hydropathist, chanced to come in.

After a little general conversation, we turned our thoughts again to our
little patient, and asked Dr. Shew what he would do with him if he were
his patient. "If it were my case," said he, "I would give him a tepid
bath--say at about the temperature of 80 deg. or 85 deg." "Would you do
nothing more?" "Nothing at all, except to put him early to bed."

I was not committed to hydropathy, as I have before told you. I never
have been, though I had a sort of general respect for Dr. Shew; and
hence it was that, incidentally, I asked him the question which I did;
and I was pleased with his