o
quote another characteristic French anecdote--and being a woman of ready
and decisive mind, she very quietly filled the vials with water from the
river Seine, and lived respectably on the proceeds, finding, to her
great relief, that the eye-water was just as good as ever. At last
however, she found herself about to die, and under the stings of an
accusing conscience she confessed her trick to her physician, an eminent
member of the profession. "Be entirely easy, Madam," said the wise man;
"don't be troubled at all. You are the most innocent physician in the
world; you have done nobody any harm."

It is an old and illiberal joke to compare medicine to war, on the
ground that the votaries of both seek to destroy life. It is, however,
not far from the truth to say that they are alike in this; that they are
both preeminently liable to mistakes, and that in both he is most
successful who makes the fewest.

How can it be otherwise, until we know more than we do at present, of
the great mysteries of life and death? It seems risky enough to permit
the wisest and most experienced physician to touch those springs of life
which God only understands. And it is enough to make the most stupid
stare, to see how people will let the most disgusting quack jangle their
very heartstrings with his poisonous messes, about as soon as if he were
the best doctor in the world. A true physician, indeed, does not hasten
to drug. The great French surgeon, Majendie, is even said to have
commenced his official course of lectures on one occasion by coolly
saying to his students: "Gentlemen, the curing of disease is a subject
that physicians know nothing about." This was doubtless an extreme way
of putting the case. Yet it was in a certain sense exactly true. There
is one of the geysers in Iceland, into which visitors throw pebbles or
turfs, with the invariable result of causing the disgusted geyser in a
few minutes to vomit the dose out again, along with a great quantity of
hot water, steam, and stuff. Now the doctor does know that some of his
doses are pretty sure to work, as the traveler knows that his dose will
work on the geyser. It is only the exact how and why that is not
understood.

But however mysterious is nature, however ignorant the doctor, however
imperfect the present state of physical science, the patronage and the
success of quacks and quackeries are infinitely more wonderful than
those of honest and laborious men of science and t