- end_line
- 3693
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3627
- text
- Disease?' As if nature, divine nature, were aught but health; as if
through nature disease is decreed! But did I not before hint of the
tendency of science, that forbidden tree? Sir, if despondency is yours
from recalling that title, dismiss it. Trust me, nature is health; for
health is good, and nature cannot work ill. As little can she work
error. Get nature, and you get well. Now, I repeat, this medicine is
nature's own."
Again the sick man could not, according to his light, conscientiously
disprove what was said. Neither, as before, did he seem over-anxious to
do so; the less, as in his sensitiveness it seemed to him, that hardly
could he offer so to do without something like the appearance of a kind
of implied irreligion; nor in his heart was he ungrateful, that since a
spirit opposite to that pervaded all the herb-doctor's hopeful words,
therefore, for hopefulness, he (the sick man) had not alone medical
warrant, but also doctrinal.
"Then you do really think," hectically, "that if I take this medicine,"
mechanically reaching out for it, "I shall regain my health?"
"I will not encourage false hopes," relinquishing to him the box, "I
will be frank with you. Though frankness is not always the weakness of
the mineral practitioner, yet the herb doctor must be frank, or nothing.
Now then, sir, in your case, a radical cure--such a cure, understand, as
should make you robust--such a cure, sir, I do not and cannot promise."
"Oh, you need not! only restore me the power of being something else to
others than a burdensome care, and to myself a droning grief. Only cure
me of this misery of weakness; only make me so that I can walk about in
the sun and not draw the flies to me, as lured by the coming of decay.
Only do that--but that."
"You ask not much; you are wise; not in vain have you suffered. That
little you ask, I think, can be granted. But remember, not in a day, nor
a week, nor perhaps a month, but sooner or later; I say not exactly
when, for I am neither prophet nor charlatan. Still, if, according to
the directions in your box there, you take my medicine steadily, without
assigning an especial day, near or remote, to discontinue it, then may
you calmly look for some eventual result of good. But again I say, you
must have confidence."
Feverishly he replied that he now trusted he had, and hourly should pray
for its increase. When suddenly relapsing into one of those strange
caprices peculiar to some invalids, he added: "But to one like me, it is
so hard, so hard. The most confident hopes so often have failed me, and
as often have I vowed never, no, never, to trust them again. Oh," feebly
wringing his hands, "you do not know, you do not know."
"I know this, that never did a right confidence, come to naught. But
time is short; you hold your cure, to retain or reject."
"I retain," with a clinch, "and now how much?"
"As much as you can evoke from your heart and heaven."
"How?--the price of this medicine?"
"I thought it was confidence you meant; how much confidence you should
have. The medicine,--that is half a dollar a vial. Your box holds six."
The money was paid.
"Now, sir," said the herb-doctor, "my business calls me away, and it may
so be that I shall never see you again; if then----"
He paused, for the sick man's countenance fell blank.
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