the system I am less certain than of the fact
itself.

But besides the absorption of the corrosive sublimate into the system,
and its consequences--a terrible caution to those who are wont to apply
salves, ointments, washes, etc., to the surface of the body
unauthorized--I learned another highly important lesson from this
circumstance. Active medicines, as I saw more plainly than ever before,
are as a sword with two edges. If they do not cut in the right
direction, they are almost sure to cut in the wrong.

I must not close, however, without telling you a little more about the
treatment of my disease. After I had left my school and had arrived at
home, a solution of sugar of lead was ordered in the very coldest water.
With this, through the intervention of layers of linen cloth, I was
directed to keep my head constantly moistened. Its object, doubtless,
was to check the inflammation, which had become exceedingly violent. Why
the sugar of lead itself was not absorbed, thus adding poison to poison,
is to me inconceivable. Perhaps it was so; and yet, such was the force
of my constitution, feeble though it was, that I recovered in spite of
both poisons. Or, what is more probable, perhaps the lead, if absorbed
at all, did not produce its effects till the effects of the corrosive
sublimate were on the wane; so that the living system was only
necessitated to war with one poison at a time. Mankind are made to live,
at least till they are worn out; and it is not always easy to poison a
person to death, if we would. In other words, human nature is tough.

Now I do not know, by the way, that any one but myself ever suspected,
even for one moment, that this attack of erysipelas was caused by the
corrosive sublimate. But could I avoid such a conclusion? Was it a hasty
or forced one? Judge, then, whether it was not perfectly natural that I
should be led by such an unfortunate adventure to turn my attention more
than ever to the subject of preserving and promoting health.

For if our family physician--cautious and judicious as in general he
was--had been the unintentional cause of a severe attack from a violent
and dangerous disease, which had come very near destroying my life, what
blunders might not be expected from the less careful and cautious man,
especially the beginner in medicine? And if medical men, old and young,
scientific as well as unscientific, make occasional blunders, how much
more frequently the mass of mankind, wh