ly in a country home, several miles from a
physician, where all but the severest sicknesses were treated with
herb-tea dosage, and this was true of all other country homes. With all
this in mind I had begun the study of medicine with a good deal less
than the average faith in the utility of dosage, and it was not enlarged
by my professor of materia medica.

I entered upon my serious duties as did good, rare, old Bunyan into his
pulpit, with a feeling fairly oppressive that I was "the least of all
the saints." My materia medica was in my vest pocket; my small library
in my head, with its contents in a very hazy condition. With a weak
memory for details, and marked inability to possess truth except by the
slow process of digestion and assimilation, my brain was more a
machine-shop than a wareroom; hence capacity of retail dealing was of
the smallest. I was not in the least conscious at this time that a large
wareroom amply stored by virtue of a retentive memory was not the most
needed as an equipment for all the practical affairs of life. I have
ever found it necessary to dodge some memories, when there was lack of
time to endure a hailstorm of details.

That I did not become a danger to the hapless sick and wounded only less
than their diseases and wounds, was wholly due to my small materia
medica, to utter lack of pride in knowledge that had not become a power
with me, and to that lofty ambition for professional success which moved
me to seize aid from no matter where or whom, as the drowning man a
straw.

It was my great professional fortune that the medical staff of this
hospital of more than a thousand cots was of a very high order of
ability and experience, and that I entered at the beginning of a
campaign in which for more than three months there was a fitful roar of
artillery and rattle of musketry every day; hence a continuous influx to
cots vacated by deaths or recoveries.

In all respects it was the best equipped hospital for professional
experience of any that I knew anything about. There was one rigid rule
that I believe was not carried out in any other hospital: post-mortems
in all cases, numbering from one to a dozen daily, and all made with a
thoroughness I have never seen in private practice.

The features of my hospital service that impressed me most were the
post-mortem revelations and the diverse treatments for the same disease.
I soon found that, no matter what the disease, every surgeon was a la