e Science. Read it from
beginning to end. Study it, ponder it. It will be, indeed, sweet at its
first taste, when it heals you; but murmur not over Truth, if you find
its digestion bitter.' You now know the history of our dear and holy
Science, sir, and that its origin is not of this earth, but only its
discovery. I will leave the book with you and will go, now; but give
yourself no uneasiness--I will give you absent treatment from now till I
go to bed."

CHAPTER III

Under the powerful influence of the near treatment and the absent
treatment together, my bones were gradually retreating inward and
disappearing from view. The good work took a brisk start, now, and went
on swiftly. My body was diligently straining and stretching, this way
and that, to accommodate the processes of restoration, and every minute
or two I heard a dull click inside and knew that the two ends of
a fracture had been successfully joined. This muffled clicking and
gritting and grinding and rasping continued during the next three
hours, and then stopped--the connections had all been made. All except
dislocations; there were only seven of these: hips, shoulders, knees,
neck; so that was soon over; one after another they slipped into their
sockets with a sound like pulling a distant cork, and I jumped up as
good as new, as to framework, and sent for the horse-doctor.

I was obliged to do this because I had a stomach-ache and a cold in
the head, and I was not willing to trust these things any longer in the
hands of a woman whom I did not know, and whose ability to successfully
treat mere disease I had lost all confidence. My position was justified
by the fact that the cold and the ache had been in her charge from the
first, along with the fractures, but had experienced not a shade of
relief; and, indeed, the ache was even growing worse and worse, and more
and more bitter, now, probably on account of the protracted abstention
from food and drink.

The horse-doctor came, a pleasant man and full of hope and professional
interest in the case. In the matter of smell he was pretty aromatic--in
fact, quite horsy--and I tried to arrange with him for absent treatment,
but it was not in his line, so, out of delicacy, I did not press it.
He looked at my teeth and examined my hock, and said my age and general
condition were favorable to energetic measures; therefore he would give
me something to turn the stomach-ache into the botts and the cold in
the