and
only mentioned in the old medical works.

The people of Dore-lyn have suffered in past ages innumerable woes on
account of intemperance. Alcohol is unknown to them, but they have had a
two-thousand year's battle against three liquids that affect them as
opium affects us. Strange to say that these terrible liquids were the
bases of many of their medicines just like the anodyne medicines of our
present day. Thus in Dore-lyn the old kinds of medicines created many
drunkards. Since the dawn of the brighter age, a strict law prevails
regarding the use of all narcotics in medicines. Then came gradually
into use the many methods of treating disease without medicine, except
the materials used to sustain life regularly.

Being interested in these things, I examined more closely into their
past medical history, and saw more clearly the present folly of a
certain part of our medicinal practice. How we are struggling with
alcohol, especially as found in so many of our patent medicines, and how
helpless we are in trying to abolish the sale of these medicines by
reason of our unbounded liberty! In our world, a man may concoct any
alcoholic medicine and sell it without liquor license, for people
become verily mad for the bottled stuff. Our nation may some day become
wise enough to keep its own hand on the business that is determining the
health and happiness of millions of its inhabitants.

But let me cease this digression and get back once more to Dore-lyn.

One of the most noted medical achievements on this world consists in the
manner of rendering a person unconscious of pain. The anatomy of a
Dore-lynite is, in general, the same as our anatomy. Their bones are
arranged a little differently and the sections of the backbone have a
quite different formation. When a surgeon of that world wishes to
perform an operation and therefore render the patient unconscious, he
presses the tough cartilagenous part of a section of the backbone with a
screw device fastened to the body of the patient. This simple act
renders the spinal cord insensitive, which condition may be maintained
for hours without injuring the patient. Of course any point above the
screw device is sensitive, and for this reason it is more difficult to
render a person unconscious in the parts about the head.

Many ages ago the world of microbes was laid bare, but not before these
people were masters of the microscope or an instrument serving the same
purposes, althoug