lung to the idea that
she could not possibly be restored without minerals, or at least
without active medicine of some sort or other, she scarcely knew what.
But she at length understood me, and followed, quite implicitly, my
directions. There was indeed a little shrinking, at first, from the
rigidity, or, as she would call it, the nakedness, of a diet which it
was indispensable to use in order to purify her blood effectually; but
she finally came bravely up to the mark, and probably reaped her reward
in it.

It is true, I did not hear from her till she came to the end of a very
long road; but up to the last of our correspondence, she was slowly
improving. My belief is that, before this time, she has fairly
recovered, and with far less injury to the vital powers than if
mercurial or other strong medicines had been used.

And herein we are reminded of a crime that not only has no name, but
deserves none. I allude to the act of communicating a disease so
distressing to an innocent and unoffending female. We had an instance of
this same crime in Chapter LXXIV. If there be such a thing as punishing
too severely, I am sure it is not in cases like these. The individual in
human shape, who, with eyes open, will run the risk of injuring those
whom he professes to love better, if possible, than himself, deserves a
punishment more condign and terrible than he to whom is so often awarded
a halter or a guillotine.

CHAPTER XCVIII.

CURIOUS AND INSTRUCTIVE FACTS.

It is morally impossible for any medical man who has kept his eyes open
for forty years, not to have been struck with certain obvious and
incontrovertible facts, of which I present a few specimens.

The _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, a few years since, in an
obituary notice of Dr. Danforth, who had long been an eminent
practitioner in Boston, makes the following remarks:--

"Though considered one of the most successful practitioners, he rarely
caused a patient to be bled. Probably, for the last twenty years of his
practice, he did not propose the use of this remedy in a single
instance. And he maintained that the abstraction of the vital fluid
diminished the power of overcoming the disease. On one occasion, he was
called to visit a number of persons who had been injured by the fall of
a house frame, and, on arrival, found another practitioner engaged in
bleeding the men. 'Doctor,' said the latter, 'I am doing your work for
you.' 'Then,' said Dr. Da