ist with his billionth dilutions, but even the no-medicine
man[B] could boast of his cures, and, for aught I could see, of about an
equal number--good sense and perseverance and other things being equal.
And then, again, he that bled everybody, or almost everybody, if
abounding in good sense, like the late Dr. Hubbard, of Pomfret, in
Connecticut, was about as successful as those who, like Dr. Danforth,
once an eminent practitioner of Boston, would bleed nobody, nor, if in
his power to prevent it, suffer the lancet to be used by anybody else.

While cogitating on this subject one day, the following anecdote from a
surgical work--I think a French work--came under my eye, and at once
solved the problem, and relieved me of my difficulty. It may probably be
relied on.

When the Abbe Fontana, a distinguished medical man and naturalist, was
travelling, once, in some of the more northern countries of Europe, he
was greatly surprised to find such a wonderful variety of applications
to the bite of the viper, and still more to find them all successful, or
at least about equally so. Even those that were in character
diametrically opposed to each other, _all cured_. His astonishment
continued and increased when he found at length that those who applied
nothing at all recovered about as readily as any of the rest.

In the sequel, as the result of diligent and scientific research, it
turned out that the bite of this animal, however dangerous and fatal in
hot climates, is scarcely dangerous at all in cold ones. Hence it was
that all sorts of treatment appeared to cure. In other words, the
persons who were bitten all recovered in spite of the applications made
to their wounds, and generally in about the same period of time.

Thus, as I began to suspect,--and the reader must pardon the suspicion,
if he can,--it may be with our diversified and diverse modes of medical
treatment. A proportion of our patients,--perhaps I should say a large
proportion,--if well nursed and cared for and encouraged, would recover
if let alone so far as regards medicine. And it is in proof of this
view, that nearly as many recover under one mode of practice, provided
that practice is guided by a large share of plain, unsophisticated
sense, as another. And does not this fully account for a most remarkable
fact?

Hence it is, too,--and perhaps hence alone,--that we can account for the
strange development in Boston, not many years since, during a public
medic