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- 3540
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- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
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- 3471
- text
- prove fat on the bones? If it will, then, sir, what is iron in the vial
will prove iron in the vein.' Seems that conclusion too confident?"
But the sick man again turned his dumb-show look, as much as to say,
"Pray leave me. Why, with painful words, hint the vanity of that which
the pains of this body have too painfully proved?"
But the other, as if unobservant of that querulous look, went on:
"But this notion, that science can play farmer to the flesh, making
there what living soil it pleases, seems not so strange as that other
conceit--that science is now-a-days so expert that, in consumptive
cases, as yours, it can, by prescription of the inhalation of certain
vapors, achieve the sublimest act of omnipotence, breathing into all but
lifeless dust the breath of life. For did you not tell me, my poor sir,
that by order of the great chemist in Baltimore, for three weeks you
were never driven out without a respirator, and for a given time of
every day sat bolstered up in a sort of gasometer, inspiring vapors
generated by the burning of drugs? as if this concocted atmosphere of
man were an antidote to the poison of God's natural air. Oh, who can
wonder at that old reproach against science, that it is atheistical? And
here is my prime reason for opposing these chemical practitioners, who
have sought out so many inventions. For what do their inventions
indicate, unless it be that kind and degree of pride in human skill,
which seems scarce compatible with reverential dependence upon the power
above? Try to rid my mind of it as I may, yet still these chemical
practitioners with their tinctures, and fumes, and braziers, and occult
incantations, seem to me like Pharaoh's vain sorcerers, trying to beat
down the will of heaven. Day and night, in all charity, I intercede for
them, that heaven may not, in its own language, be provoked to anger
with their inventions; may not take vengeance of their inventions. A
thousand pities that you should ever have been in the hands of these
Egyptians."
But again came nothing but the dumb-show look, as much as to say, "Pray
leave me; quacks, and indignation against quacks, both are vain."
But, once more, the other went on: "How different we herb-doctors! who
claim nothing, invent nothing; but staff in hand, in glades, and upon
hillsides, go about in nature, humbly seeking her cures. True Indian
doctors, though not learned in names, we are not unfamiliar with
essences--successors of Solomon the Wise, who knew all vegetables, from
the cedar of Lebanon, to the hyssop on the wall. Yes, Solomon was the
first of herb-doctors. Nor were the virtues of herbs unhonored by yet
older ages. Is it not writ, that on a moonlight night,
"Medea gathered the enchanted herbs
That did renew old Æson?"
Ah, would you but have confidence, you should be the new Æson, and
I your Medea. A few vials of my Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator would, I am
certain, give you some strength."
Upon this, indignation and abhorrence seemed to work by their excess the
effect promised of the balsam. Roused from that long apathy of
impotence, the cadaverous man started, and, in a voice that was as the
sound of obstructed air gurgling through a maze of broken honey-combs,
cried: "Begone! You are all alike. The name of doctor, the dream of
helper, condemns you. For years I have been but a gallipot for you
experimentizers to rinse your experiments into, and now, in this livid
skin, partake of the nature of my contents. Begone! I hate ye."
"I were inhuman, could I take affront at a want of confidence, born of
too bitter an experience of betrayers. Yet, permit one who is not
without feeling----"
"Begone! Just in that voice talked to me, not six months ago, the German
doctor at the water cure, from which I now return, six months and sixty
pangs nigher my grave."
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