my office a man who desired me to go with him and see a sick babe. I
found the most miserable looking three months' old child I had ever
seen. Nothing could exceed the emaciation and puniness of the little
creature, and the mother was carrying it about upon a pillow. For six
weeks it had cried night and day, almost incessantly, except when under
the influence of opiates. Five old school doctors had done what they
could, and at last had declared that it could not live. They had not
been able to establish the diagnosis, and so were at sea as to
treatment. I sat beside it and studied the case as closely as possible
for more than an hour. There was but one peculiarity or symptom upon
which to base a prescription. It was this: It would lie a few moments
apparently asleep, then it would give a start and begin to scream with
all its puny power. This would last one or two minutes, when it would as
suddenly fall asleep again. This, they assured me, was the way it had
performed all through its illness, except when opiated. 'Pains come and
go suddenly.' That was all I had to go on. I could not locate the pains,
nor by any possible means know what the cause of them was; but I did
know, thank God, what was of infinitely greater importance: I knew the
drug that had that particular symptom, and that was Belladonna. Into
half a tumblerful of water I dropped five or six drops of the two
hundredth dilution of that drug, and put a few drops of this medicated
water into the poor little thing's mouth."

Here the Doctor stopped, knocked the ashes from his pipe, arose and
started as if to leave the room.

"Hold on, Doctor," cried Fred; "I am very much interested in that baby.
How did it come out on your Belladonna solution?"

"O yes! I should have said that it immediately went to sleep, and did
not awaken for several hours. It never cried again, received no more
medicine, and in a few weeks would have made a model picture for a
patent baby food company. It only received the one little dose that I
gave it."

"I declare," said the Count, laughing heartily, "that it sounds absurd
beyond anything I ever heard in my life. Yet who has greater reason to
know it to be absolutely true than myself. Go on, Doctor; I am prepared
to believe anything you are pleased to tell us of your miraculous
system."

"Before I go I think I will spin you one more story," said the Doctor,
reseating himself. "This is what might be termed the reductio ad
absurdum o