“All the better; we'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.”
“All right: but not of your favorite Acetate of Morphia; because that is the draught that takes the reason prisoner.”
“It's no favorite of mine. Indeed, experience has taught me that all sedatives excite; if they soothe at first, they excite next day. My antidotes to mental excitement are packing in lukewarm water, and, best of all, hard bodily exercise and the perspiration that follows it. To put it shortly—prolonged bodily excitement antidotes mental excitement.”
“I'll take a note of that. It is the wisest thing I ever heard from any learned physician.”
“Yet many a learned physician knows it. But you are a little prejudiced against the faculty.”
“Only in their business. They are delightful out of that. But, come now, nobody hears us—confess, the system which prescribes drugs, drugs, drugs at every visit and in every case, and does not give a severe selection of esculents the first place, but only the second or third, must be rotten at the core. Don't you despise a layman's eye. All the professions want it.”
“Well, you are a writer; publish a book, call it Medicina laici, and send me a copy.”
“To slash in the Lancet? Well, I will: when novels cease to pay and truth begins to.”
In the course of the evening Mr. Rolfe drew Dr. Suaby apart, and said, “I must tell you frankly, I mean to relieve you of one of your inmates.”
“Only one? I was in hopes you would relieve me of all the sane people. They say you are ingenious at it. All I know is, I can't get rid of an inmate if the person who signed the order resists. Now, for instance, here's a Mrs. Hallam came here unsound: religious delusion. Has been cured two months. I have reported her so to her son-in-law, who signed the order; but he will not discharge her. He is vicious, she scriptural; bores him about eternity. Then I wrote to the Commissioners in Lunacy; but they don't like to strain their powers, so they wrote to the affectionate son-in-law, and he politely declines to act. Sir Charles Bassett the same: three weeks ago I reported him cured, and the detaining relative has not even replied to me.”