“Very likely you did,” answered Demoleon, “and there are persons, I do not doubt, who would have done it, persons, too, who ought to know better.” This was levelled at a rival practitioner in the town for whom he entertained a most thorough contempt. “Do you know, sir,” he went on, “where men learnt the practice of bleeding?”
“No, I do not,” said Demochares.
“It was from the hippopotamus. That animal has been observed to bleed himself. Doubtless the operation does him good. But it does not follow that what is good for an animal as big as a cottage is good also for a man. Doubtless there are men for whom it is good. When I have to deal with a mountain of a man, one of your city dignitaries bloated by rich feeding, by chines of beef and pork and flagons of rich wine, I don’t hesitate to bleed him. His thick skin, his rolls of fat flesh, seem to require it. In fact he is a human hippopotamus. But to bleed a spare young fellow, who has been going through months of labor and hard living would be to kill him. I wonder that you can suggest such a thing.”
“I am sure I am very sorry,” said the merchant humbly.
“Happily no harm is done,” replied the physician, cooling down a little. “And, after all, this is not your business, and you may be excused for your ignorance, but there are others,” he went off muttering in a low voice, “who ought to know better, and ought to be punished for such folly. It is sheer murder.”
I do not intend to describe the course of the long illness of which this was the beginning. There were times when even the hopefulness of the physician—and his hopefulness was one of his strongest and most helpful qualities—failed him. Relapse after relapse, coming with disheartening frequency, just when he had seemed to have gathered a little strength, brought him close to the gates of death.
“I have done all that I can,” said Demoleon one evening to Epicharis the nurse. “If any one is to save him, it must be you. If you want me, send for me, of course. Otherwise I shall not come. It breaks my heart to see this fine young fellow dying, when there are hundreds of worthless brutes whom the earth would be better without.”
Epicharis never lost heart; for a nurse to lose heart is more fatal than the physician’s despair. For nearly a week she scarcely slept. Not a single opportunity of administering some strengthening food did she lose—for now the fever had passed, and the danger lay in the excessive exhaustion. At last her patience was rewarded. The sick man turned the corner, and Demoleon, summoned at last, to alleviate, he feared, the last agony, found, to his inexpressible delight, that the cure was really begun.
“You are the physician,” he cried, as he seized the nurse’s hand and kissed it; “I am only a fool.”
Winter had passed into spring, and spring into summer, before Callias could be pronounced out of danger. Even then his recovery was slow. Some months were spent in a mountain village where the bracing air worked wonders in giving him back his strength. As the cold weather came on he returned to his comfortable home in Trapezus. Though scarcely an invalid, he was still a little short of perfect recovery. Besides it was not the time for travelling. Anyhow it was the spring of the following year, and now more than twelve months from the time of his first illness, when he was pronounced fit to travel. Even then it was only something like flat rebellion on the part of his patient that induced Demoleon to give way. The young man was wearying for home and friends. He had heard nothing of them for several months, for communication was always stopped during the winter between Athens and the ports of the Euxine, while the eastward bound ships that always started after the dangerous season of the equinox had passed, had not yet arrived.