and many experiments, most efficacious means were
discovered for detecting and curing this dreadful disease while still in
its incipient state.

I ought to mention, that on the death of the girl to whom the potion was
administered, her friends learning that I had not opposed the
administering the fatal potion, were very violent against me and,
instigated by those who had at first opposed my law, openly declared
that she had been put to death by my orders. They thus succeeded in
arousing the passions of the multitude. At that time many young persons
were dying of consumption in a marshy valley, while others were
afflicted with disorders, which baffled the skill of the physicians and
were accompanied with the same symptoms that attended the malady of the
deceased girl. During the popular excitement to which I have referred,
the parents of these sufferers were made to believe that potions similar
to those which had already been administered with such fatal results,
were now to be administered to their own sick children, and that similar
results would ensue.

I lost not a moment in summoning before me the heads of families and
friends of the sufferers, at the same time announcing the subject on
which I wished to discourse.

The meeting took place in the great hall of my palace, which is capable
of containing many thousands, and I explained to the assembled multitude
that when the potion was administered to the deceased girl, the malady
was so far advanced that there were no means of saving her life, and
that in administering the potion the doctors had hoped to do good,
believing, contrary to my own convictions, that the complaint was not
organic. I explained that her death, and the knowledge gained by the
examination of her lungs, would be the salvation of most of their
children, of the nature of whose malady the doctors were now convinced.

Asked by the girl's friends if I would myself take a potion similar to
that administered to the girl, I offered to drink double the quantity,
in the presence of the assembled multitude. When the cup was close to my
lips, and I was about to drink the potion, a woman in the crowd called
out that the liquid I held in my hand was innocuous, and very different
to the poisonous draught administered to the girl! So convinced was she
of this, that she offered to let her own child drink the potion out of
my cup!

This child being, as I believed, afflicted with incipient consumption, I
c