"Nay, I—maybe I am.... Dorchester, you said? Might I not go with you? You said a while ago that soon I could go with you on your rounds."
Reuben heard Mr. Welland catch his breath. "Not this one!" As often in bothered moments, Mr. Welland took snuff. "The message at the ordinary was—fi-choo-shoo!—garbled as usual, but having dissected out the fleck or two of not-so-golden truth from the rubbish, I have some reason to fear smallpox. That's in confidence, Doctor." He poked Reuben's shoulder, smiling a little but also stern. "Not a word to anyone. If it's true we'll all know it shortly, but if not there's no reason to set people's hearts a-squirming. Lord God, it comes, and comes again, and again, and we live like sheep on the side of Vesuvius, never knowing. Reuben, I sometimes think—and you'll have bad moments of thinking it too—that all we doctors do is no whit better than what the Inj'ans do, howling and screaming and beating drums around a sick man's hut to scare away the demons. Do you know that in all history no epidemic hath ever been overcome, nor even much lightened? It strikes, runs its course, and we stand helpless, making motions in the air. And yet one would think that if contagion could somehow be prevented—but where doth it breed? We don't know. What is contagion? We don't know. Why should a thing like the black plague have struck at England as it did some thirty years ago, and then after blazing and slaying for a time, simply fade away, for no reason men can see? Don't know, don't know. Sir Thomas Sydenham, a great venerator of Hippocrates by the way, was much concerned with epidemiology; I remain skeptical as to his conclusions. Galen, the great Galen to whom they say we must all bow down—Galen evades; I would have thee most cautious, Reuben, with regard to all the doctrines of Galen. If at Harvard they give you Galen as a final authority, be polite, but read in private the works of Sydenham—and even Paracelsus for that matter.... I'll tell thee an almost comical thing: I have lived fifty-three years, have read much and pondered, have spoke with a goodly number of learned and thoughtful men, and I have never, never satisfied myself as to a proper definition of good health."
"May it be, that state wherein flesh and spirit (the two indivisible, I think) are free to act as fully as the condition of a social being will allow?"
"Reuben...." The doctor was leaning forward in his chair, frowning intently, hands clasped before him. "Reuben, you did not give me that on the spur of the moment."
"Why, no, sir. I was fretting at that question the other night—only I came to it from the other side, wondering, what is disease? I wished a broader definition than any I found in the books, and so searched a little, but I don't know that it satisfies me altogether."
"I think—mm-yas—I think I will accept it until such time as you give me a better.... It takes no account of theology of course. But then, I cannot entertain the thought of a punishing God. Nor even a personal God perhaps. If personal, then in some way well beyond man's imagination. It often amazes me, that others can find such great comfort in the notion of a punishing God. Yet they do."
"It saves them from thought."
"Eh? How's that?"
"I think it saves them, sir, from the pains and trials of thought."
"Keep thy sharpness, Reuben. Thou hast already a summer heart and will not lose it. Keep that thorn in the tongue. Hide it almost always, but use it at need, never mind if others wince or even hate thee for it. Sir William Harvey was an angry man, too much perhaps, yet without the thorn in his tongue I dare say no one would ever have heeded him. I have none myself." Mr. Welland bent down, short of breath, to fumble at his shoes. "In anger I am—mm-yas—most ineffectual, a poor thing. I flush and mumble, lose all command of my thoughts. Anger requires a coolness I do not possess." He groped for the shoes Reuben had cleaned, and slipped his feet into them, and sighed. "Ah, that's better—my most comfortable pair. Thou art both cool and warm." Mr. Welland's fingers fussed awkwardly at the shoelaces; Reuben would have helped him, but had been unreasonably shaken by the words and did not trust his face. "I suppose that is one reason why I love thee."