at disease might enter, to leave nothing to chance; not merely
to throw a few pills and powders into one pan of the scales of Fate,
while Death the skeleton was seated in the other, but to lean with his
whole weight on the side of life, and shift the balance in its favor
if it lay in human power to do it. Such devotion as this is only to be
looked for in the man who gives himself wholly up to the business of
healing, who considers Medicine itself a Science, or if not a science,
is willing to follow it as an art,--the noblest of arts, which the gods
and demigods of ancient religions did not disdain to practise and to
teach.

The same zeal made him always ready to listen to any new suggestion
which promised to be useful, at a period of life when many men find
it hard to learn new methods and accept new doctrines. Few of
his generation became so accomplished as he in the arts of direct
exploration; coming straight from the Parisian experts, I have examined
many patients with him, and have had frequent opportunities of observing
his skill in percussion and auscultation.

One element in his success, a trivial one compared with others, but not
to be despised, was his punctuality. He always carried two watches,--I
doubt if he told why, any more than Dr. Johnson told what he did with
the orange-peel,--but probably with reference to this virtue. He was as
much to be depended upon at the appointed time as the solstice or
the equinox. There was another point I have heard him speak of as an
important rule with him; to come at the hour when he was expected; if
he had made his visit for several days successively at ten o'clock, for
instance, not to put it off, if he could possibly help it, until eleven,
and so keep a nervous patient and an anxious family waiting for him
through a long, weary hour.

If I should attempt to characterize his teaching, I should say that
while it conveyed the best results of his sagacious and extended
observation, it was singularly modest, cautious, simple, sincere.
Nothing was for show, for self-love; there was no rhetoric, no
declamation, no triumphant "I told you so," but the plain statement of
a clear-headed honest man, who knows that he is handling one of the
gravest subjects that interest humanity. His positive instructions were
full of value, but the spirit in which he taught inspired that loyal
love of truth which lies at the bottom of all real excellence.

I will not say that, during his long