what they are
still. My belief is, that though they might have sickened had they taken
no medicine or preventive, yet their chance of recovery after they
sickened was very much diminished by the unnecessary and uncalled-for
dosing and drugging.

The notion that we can physick off the seeds of disease, or by our
dosing prevent their germination, is as erroneous as can possibly be,
and is a prolific source of much suffering and frequent death. The best
preventive of disease is good health. Now, physicking off generally
weakens us, instead of giving strength. It takes away from our good
health instead of adding to or increasing it. As a general rule, to
which there are very few exceptions, all medicine, when disease is
unusually common or fatal, is hazardous without sound medical advice,
and not generally safe even then. It is fit only for extreme cases.

You may be at a loss to understand how such facts and reflections as
these could allure me to the study and practice of medicine as a
profession. Yet they most certainly had influence. Not that I felt a
very strong desire to deal out medicine, for to this I felt a repugnance
which strengthened with increase of years and experience. What I most
ardently desired was to know the causes of disease, and how far they
were or were not within human control. Such a science as that of
_hygiene_--nay, even the word itself, and the phrase _laws of
health_--was at that time wholly unknown in the world in which I moved.
There was, in truth, no way then to this species of knowledge, except
through the avenues opened by a course of medical study. Hence it was
that I blundered on, in partial though not entire ignorance, for some
time longer, groping and searching for that light which I hardly knew
how or whence to seek, except in pills and powders and blisters and
tinctures.

CHAPTER XII.

MANUFACTURING CHILBLAINS.

At the period of my life to which we have at length arrived, I was for
four or five months of every year a school teacher. This was, in no
trifling degree, an educational process; for is it not well known that,

"Teaching we learn, and giving we retain?"

It was at least an education in the great school of human nature.

Every morning of one of these winter sessions of school keeping, Lydia
Maynard, eight years of age, after walking about a mile, frequently in
deep snow, and combating the cold northwest winds of one of the southern
Green Mountain ranges,