g vent to all the malignant humours that had been so long silently
gathering.

In the mean while, the smooth and considerate Dr. Dridrano stept into
the sick room, with the view of offering an apology for the unmannerly
conduct of his brethren, and of tendering his single services, as the
other sages of the healing art could not agree in the course to be
pursued; when he found that the patient, profiting by the simple
remedies of the Brahmin, and an hour's rest, had been so much refreshed,
that he considered himself out of danger, and that he had no need of
medical assistance; or, at any rate, he was unwilling to follow the
prescriptions of one physician, which another, if not two others,
unhesitatingly condemned. Each one then received his fee, and hurried
home, to publish his own statement of the case in a pamphlet.

The Brahmin, who had never left the sick man's couch during his sleep,
now that he was out of danger, was greatly diverted at the dispute. But
he good-naturedly added, that, notwithstanding the ridiculous figure
they had that day made, they were all men of genius and ability, but had
done their parts injustice by their vanity, and the ambition of
originating a new theory. "With all the extravagance," said he, "to
which they push their several systems, they are not unsuccessful in
practice, for habitual caution, and an instinctive regard for human
life, which they never can extinguish, checks them in carrying their
hypotheses into execution: and if I might venture to give an opinion on
a subject of which I know so little, and there is so much to be known, I
would say, that the most common error of theorists is to consider man as
a machine, rather than an animal, and subject to one set of the laws of
matter, rather than as subject to them all.

"Thus," he continued, "we have been regarded by one class of theorists
as an hydraulic engine, composed of various tubes fitted with their
several fluids, the laws and functions of which have been deduced from
calculations of velocities, altitudes, diameters, friction, &c. Another
class considered man as a mere chemical engine, and his stomach as an
alembic. The doctrine of affinities, attractions, and repulsions, now
had full play. Then came the notion of sympathies and antipathies, by
which name unknown and unknowable causes were sought to be explained,
and ignorance was cunningly veiled in mystery. But the science will
never be in the right tract of improvement,