第23章

But to this sick and therefore weak man, comes a Docker purblind with cinturies of Cant, Pricidint, Blood, and Goose Greece; imagines him a fiery pervalid, though the common sense of mankind through its interpreter common language, pronounces him an 'invalid,' gashes him with a lancet, spills out the great liquid material of all repair by the gallon, and fells this weak man, wounded now, and pale, and fainting, with Dith stamped on his face, to th' earth, like a bayoneted soldier or a slaughtered ox. If the weak man, wounded thus, and weakened, survives, then the chartered Thugs who have drained him by the bung-hole, turn to and drain him by the spigot; they blister him, and then calomel him: and lest Nature should have the ghost of a chance to conterbalance these frightful outgoings, they keep strong meat and drink out of his system emptied by their stabs, bites, purges, mercury, and blisters; damdijjits!

And that, Asia excipted, was profissional Midicine from Hippocrates to Sampsin. Antiphlogistic is but a modern name for an ass-ass-inating rouutine which has niver varied a hair since scholastic midicine, the silliest and didliest of all the hundred forms of Quackery, first rose--unlike Seeince, Art, Religion, and all true Suns--in the West; to wound the sick; to weaken the weak; and mutilate the hurt; and thin mankind."The voluble impugner of his own profession delivered these two last words in thunder so sudden and effective as to strike Julia's work out of her hands. But here, as in Nature, a moment's pause followed the thunderclap;so Mrs. Dodd, who had long been patiently watching her opportunity, smothered a shriek, and edged in a word: "This is irresistible; you have confuted everybody, to their heart's content; and now the question is, what course shall we substitute?" She meant, "in the great case, which occupies me." But Sampson attached a nobler, wider, sense to her query.

"What course? Why the great Chronothairmal practice, based on the remittent and febrile character of all disease; above all, on The law of Perriodicity, a law Midicine yet has wells of light to draw.

By Remittency, I mean th' ebb of Disease, by Perriodicity, th' ebb and also the flow, the paroxysm and the remission. These remit and recur, and keep tune like the tides, not in ague and remittent fever only, as the Profission imagines to this day, but in all diseases from a Scirrhus in the Pylorus t' a toothache. And I discovered this, and the new path to cure of all diseases it opens. Alone I did it; and what my reward?

Hooted, insulted, belied, and called a quack by the banded school of profissional assassins, who, in their day hooted Harvey and Jinner--authors too of great discoveries, but discoveries narrow in their consequences compared with mine. T' appreciate Chronothairmalism, ye must begin at the beginning; so just answer me--What is man?"At this huge inquiry whirring tip all in a moment, like a cock-pheasant in a wood, Mrs. Dodd sank back in her chair despondent. Seeing her _hors de combat,_ Sampson turned to Julia and demanded, twice as loud, "WHAT ISMAN?" Julia opened two violet eyes at him, and then looked at her mother for a hint how to proceed.

"How can that child answer such a question?" sighed Mrs. Dodd. "Let us return to the point.""I have never strayed an inch from it. It's about 'Young Physic.'""No, excuse me, it is about a young lady. Universal Medicine: what have Ito do with that?""Now this is the way with them all," cried Sampson, furious; "there lowed John Bull. The men and women of this benighted nashin have an ear for anything, provided it matters nothing: talk Jology, Conchology, Entomology, Theology, Meteorology, Astronomy, Deuteronomy, Botheronomy, or Boshology, and one is listened to with rivirence, because these are all far-off things in fogs; but at a word about the great, near, useful art of Healing, y'all stop your ears; for why? your life and dailianhourly happiness depend on it. But 'no,' sis John Bull, the knowledge of our own buddies, and how to save our own Bakin--Beef Imean--day by day, from disease and chartered ass-ass-ins, all that may interest the thinkers in Saturn, but what the deevil is it t' _us?_ Talk t' _us_ of the hiv'nly buddies, not of our own; babble o' comets an'

meteors an' Ethereal nibulae (never mind the nibulae in our own skulls).

Discourse t' us of Predistinashin, Spitzbairgen seaweed, the last novel, the siventh vile; of Chrisehinising the Patagonians on condition they are not to come here and Chrischinise the Whitechapelians; of the letter to the _Times_ from the tinker wrecked at Timbuctoo; and the dear Professor's lecture on the probabeelity of snail-shells in the backyard of the moon: but don't ask us to know ourselves--Ijjits!!"The eloquent speaker, depressed by the perversity of Englishmen in giving their minds to every part of creation but their bodies, suffered a momentary loss of energy; then Mrs. Dodd, who had long been watching lynx-like, glided in. "Let us compound. You are for curing all the world, beginning with Nobody. My ambition is to cure _my girl,_ and leave mankind in peace. Now, if you will begin with _my Julia,_ I will submit to rectify the universe in its proper turn. Any time will do to set the human race right; you own it is in no hurry: but _my child's_ case presses; so do pray cure her for me. Or at least tell me what her Indisposition is.""Oh! What! didn't I tell you? Well, there's nothing the matter with her."At receiving this cavalier reply for the reward of all her patience, Mrs.

Dodd was so hurt, and so nearly angry, that she rose with dignity from her seat, her cheek actually pink, and the water in her eyes. Sampson saw she was ruffled, and appealed to Julia--of all people. "There now, Miss Julia," said he, ruefully; "she is in a rage because I won't humbug her.