The boys were nearly of a size, though the nephew was a month or two older than his uncle, a relationship that was early impressed on their young minds, and caused those who heard their prattle many a hearty laugh.
“Mrs. Dodd,” said a lady, “I couldn't tell by your manner which is yours and which is your daughter's.”
“Why they are both mine,” said Mrs. Dodd piteously, and opening her eyes with gentle astonishment.
As years rolled on Dr. Sampson made many converts at home and abroad. The foreign ones acknowledged their obligations. The leading London physicians managed more skilfully; they came into his ideas, and bit by bit reversed their whole practice, and, twenty years after, Sampson began to strengthen the invalid at once, instead of first prostrating him, and so causing either long sickness or sudden death. But, with all this, they disowned their forerunner, and still called him a quack while adopting his quackery. This dishonesty led them into difficulties. To hide that their whole practice in medicine was reversed on better information, they went from shuffle to shuffle, till at last they reached this climax of fatuity and egotism—THE TYPE OF DISEASE IS CHANGED.
Natura mutatur, non nos mutamur.
O, mutable Nature and immutable doctors!
O, unstable Omniscience, and infallible Nescience!
The former may err; the latter never—in its own opinion.
At this rate, draining the weak of their life blood was the right thing in Cervantes' day: and when he observed that it killed men like sheep, and said so under the head of Sangrado, he was confounding his own age with an age to come three hundred years later, in which coming age depletion was going to be wrong.
Moliere—in lashing the whole scholastic system of lancet, purge, and blister as one of slaughter—committed the same error: mistook his century for one to come.