"I can walk now," he said, "a little."
Dr. Renault was at the other end of the ward sitting beside a girl of twelve, with one arm about her thin back, talking to her. The child's face was stained with half-dried tears. Presently the doctor took the child up and carried her to the window, and continued to talk to her, pointing out of the window. After a time he joined Isabelle, saying:—
"I was kept from meeting you when you came by that little girl over there. She is, by the way, one of our most interesting cases. Came here for hip disease. She is an orphan,—nothing known about her parents,—probably alcoholic from the mental symptoms. She has hysteria and undeveloped suicidal mania."
"What can you do for her?"
"What we can with medicine and surgery, and where that fails—we try other means."
Isabelle was eager to know what were those "other means," but the doctor was not a man to be questioned. Presently as he sauntered through the room he volunteered:—
"I have been talking to her,—telling her how the hills are made…. You see we have to clean out their minds as well as their bodies, get rid so far as we can of the muddy deposit, both the images associated with their environment—that is done by bringing them up here—and also what might be called inherited thought processes. Give 'em a sort of spiritual purge, in other words," he said with a smile. "Then we can build up, feed their minds something fresh. Sarah Stern there is an obstinate case,—she has a deep deposit of ancestral gloom."
"But you can't overcome the temperament, the inherited nature!"
Renault waved his hand impatiently.
"You've been told that since you were born. We have all grown up in that belief,—it is the curse of the day! … It can't be done altogether—yet. Sarah may revert and cut her throat when she leaves here…. But the vital work for medicine to-day is to see just how much can be done to change temperament,—inherited nature, as you call it. In other words, to put new forces to work in diseased brains. Perhaps some day we can do it all,—who knows?"