e required
manacled wrists and the prying apart of set jaws. He had never received
anything from me more violent than caresses, and this abomination of
dosage was to be sent down a bleeding, ulcerated way, over raw surfaces
that would writhe and quiver under the added torture. This would not be
rational treatment for ulcerations on the body, and the loss of strength
through resistance and structural injury to the throat had no promise of
redemption except in the minds of my medical friends.

It happened that I left home without getting the prescription filled,
and, not getting back as soon as expected, the anxious wife procured the
medicines and succeeded in getting one dose into the stomach, and also
in raising a nervous hurricane that took an hour to allay. She was then
informed that such a dose would be cruel even to a horse. Thence on he
took nothing into his stomach but the water that thirst compelled, and a
little dosage with it to meet the mother's need; and so I stood beside
the suffering idol of my heart, with the entire medical world against
me--strong enough, only rejoicing in my strength to defend him against
the barbarism of authorized treatment. My only comfort was that in his
time of supreme need I could give him supreme kindness, and if death
must come there would not be the additional laceration of avoidable
cruelty inflicted; and Nature, with every possible aid that could add
comfort to the suffering body, won the victory.

Since then the medical world has advanced to antitoxin as a specific,
leaving me nearly alone to plodding ways that are by sight and not by
faith. That the treatment of my sick son in the absence of the only
supposed specific was in advance of my time, the medical world cannot
now question.

As the months and years went on, it so happened that all my fatalities
were of a character as not to involve in the least suggestions of
starvation, while the recoveries were a series of demonstrations as
clear as anything in mathematics, of evolving strength of all the
muscles, of all the senses and faculties, as the disease declined. No
physician whose practice has been extensive has failed to have had cases
in which the same changes occurred, and in which the amount of food
taken did not explain this general increase of strength.

Believing I had made a most important discovery in physiology, one that
would revolutionize the dietetic treatment of the sick, if not
ultimately abolish it, my