It was a new experience—the first time I had ever known my word to be questioned.
During the day one thought dominated all others: where are those treasures of literature which, rich though they are, fail to satisfy their owner's voracious intellectual appetite? As houses were then built, the living and sleeping rooms were all on one main floor. Here they comprised a kitchen, dining room, medicine room, a little parlor, and two small sleeping rooms, one for the doctor and one for myself. Before many hours I had managed to see the interior of every one except the doctor's bedroom, and there was not a sign of a book unless such common ones as a dictionary or a Bible. What could it all mean?
Next day the darkness was illuminated, at least temporarily, by a ray of light. The doctor had been absent most of the day before on a visit to some distant patient. Now he came to me and told me he wanted to show me how to make bilious powders. Several trays of dried herbs had been drying under the kitchen stove until their leaves were quite brittle. He took these and I followed him to the narrow stairway, which we slowly ascended, he going ahead. As I mounted I looked for a solution of the difficulty. Here upstairs must be where the doctor kept his books. At each step I peered eagerly ahead until my head was on a level with the floor. Rafters and a window at the other end had successively come into view and now the whole interior was visible. Nothing was there but a loft, at the further end of which was a bed for the housemaid. The floor was strewn with dried plants. Nothing else was visible. The disillusion seemed complete. My heart sank within me.
On one side of the stairway at a level with the floor was screwed a large coffee mill. The doctor spread a sheet of paper out on the floor on the other side, and laid a line sieve upon it. Then he showed me how to grind the dry and brittle leaves in the coffee mill, put them into the sieve, and sift them on the paper. This work had a scientific and professional look which infused a glimmer of light into the Cimmerian darkness. The bilious powders were made of the leaves of four plants familiarly known as spearmint, sunflower, smartweed, and yarrow. In his practice a heaping teaspoonful of the pulverized leaves was stirred in a cup of warm water and the grosser parts were allowed to settle, while the patient took the finer parts with the infusion. This was one of Dr. Foshay's staple remedies. Another was a pill of which the principal active ingredient was aloes. The art of making these pills seemed yet more scientific than the other, and I was much pleased to find how soon I could master it. Beside these a number of minor remedies were kept in the medicine room. Among them were tinctures of lobelia, myrrh, and capsicum. There was also a pill box containing a substance which, from its narcotic odor, I correctly inferred to be opium. This drug being prohibited by the Botanic School I could not but feel that Dr. Foshay's orthodoxy was painfully open to question.
Determined to fathom the mystery in which the doctor's plans for my improvement were involved, I announced my readiness to commence the study of the botanic system. He disappeared in the direction of his bedroom, and soon returned with—could my eyes believe it?—a big book. It was one which, at the time of its publication, some thirty or forty years before, was well known to the profession,—Miner and Tully on the "Fevers of the Connecticut Valley." He explained bringing me this book.
"Before beginning the regular study of the botanic system, you must understand something of the old system. You can do so by reading this book."
A duller book I never read. There was every sort of detail about different forms of fever, which needed different treatment; yet calomel and, I think, opium were its main prescriptions. In due time I got through it and reported to my preceptor.
"Well, what do you think of the book?"
"It praises calomel and opium too much. But I infer from reading it that there are so many kinds of fever and other diseases that an immense amount of study will be required to distinguish and treat them."
"Oh, you will find that all these minute distinctions are not necessary when we treat the sick on the botanic system."