ment should be
applied by Bouvard. She took a seat before the window, unfastened the
upper portion of her corset, and remained with her cheek turned up,
looking at him with a glance of her eye which would have been dangerous
were it not for Pecuchet's presence. In the prescribed doses, and in
spite of the horror felt with regard to mercury, they administered
calomel. One month afterwards Madame Bordin was cured. She became a
propagandist in their behalf, and the tax-collector, the mayor's
secretary, the mayor himself, and everybody in Chavignolles sucked
camphor by the aid of quills.

However, the hunchback did not get straight; the collector gave up his
cigarette; it stopped up his chest twice as much. Foureau made
complaints that the pills of aloes gave him hemorrhoids. Bouvard got a
stomachache, and Pecuchet fearful headaches. They lost confidence in
Raspail, but took care to say nothing about it, fearing that they might
lessen their own importance.

They now exhibited great zeal about vaccine, learned how to bleed people
over cabbage leaves, and even purchased a pair of lancets.

They accompanied the doctor to the houses of the poor, and then
consulted their books. The symptoms noticed by the writers were not
those which they had just observed. As for the names of diseases, they
were Latin, Greek, French--a medley of every language. They are to be
counted by thousands; and Linnaeus's system of classification, with its
genera and its species, is exceedingly convenient; but how was the
species to be fixed? Then they got lost in the philosophy of medicine.
They raved about the life-principle of Van Helmont, vitalism, Brownism,
organicism, inquired of the doctor whence comes the germ of scrofula,
towards what point the infectious miasma inclines, and the means in all
cases of disease to distinguish the cause from its effects.

"The cause and the effect are entangled in one another," replied
Vaucorbeil.

His want of logic disgusted them--and they went by themselves to visit
the sick, making their way into the houses on the pretext of
philanthropy. At the further end of rooms, on dirty mattresses, lay
persons with faces hanging on one side, others who had them swollen or
scarlet, or lemon-coloured, or very violet-hued, with pinched nostrils,
trembling mouths, rattlings in the throat, hiccoughs, perspirations, and
emissions like leather or stale cheese.

They read the prescriptions of their physicians, and were surp