e his own assassin or his own method
of defending his body against disease and death.

And yet at the same time, with curious and senile inconsistency, the
State has allowed the man to choose his own assassin--in one detail--the
patent-medicine detail--making itself the protector of that perilous
business, collecting money out of it, and appointing no committee of
experts to examine the medicines and forbid them when extra dangerous.
Really, when a man can prove that he is not a jackass, I think he is in
the way to prove that he is no legitimate member of the race.

I have by me a list of 52 human ailments--common ones--and in this list
I count 19 which the physician's art cannot cure. But there isn't one
which Osteopathy or Kellgren cannot cure, if the patient comes early.

Fifteen years ago I had a deep reverence for the physician and the
surgeon. But 6 months of closely watching the Kellgren business has
revolutionized all that, and now I have neither reverence nor respect
for the physician's trade, and scarcely any for the surgeon's,--I am
convinced that of all quackeries, the physician's is the grotesquest and
the silliest. And they know they are shams and humbugs. They have taken
the place of those augurs who couldn't look each other in the face
without laughing.

See what a powerful hold our ancient superstitions have upon us:
two weeks ago, when Livy committed an incredible imprudence and
by consequence was promptly stricken down with a heavy triple
attack--influenza, bronchitis, and a lung affected--she recognized the
gravity of the situation, and her old superstitions rose: she thought
she ought to send for a doctor--Think of it--the last man in the world I
should want around at such a time. Of course I did not say no--not that
I was indisposed to take the responsibility, for I was not, my notion of
a dangerous responsibility being quite the other way--but because it is
unsafe to distress a sick person; I only said we knew no good doctor,
and it could not be good policy to choose at hazard; so she allowed me
to send for Kellgren. To-day she is up and around--cured. It is safe to
say that persons hit in the same way at the same time are in bed yet,
and booked to stay there a good while, and to be in a shackly condition
and afraid of their shadows for a couple of years or more to come.

It will be seen by the foregoing that Mark Twain's interest in the
Kellgren system was still an ardent one. Indeed, for a t