“ ‘My friend, these hones were doubtless fossils. You are slandering your fellow-citizens. But you are free, continue.’
“I wished to raise my voice against this profanation, this brutality, this sacrilege, but the Shark, biting my ear till it bled, advised me to be calm, resolute, and happy.
“ ‘You must not puzzle your brain about the mysteries of clinical surgery,’ said he.
“ ‘I have already done that,’ I replied.
“ ‘Hush! I am about to describe your case to these gentlemen, who are only too anxious to see you on your legs again. It is necessary they should be made acquainted with the prognostics, diagnostics, the symptomatology, the dietetic and, shall we say, numismatic details, not one of which shall be overlooked. If you are not instantly cured, we will not waste precious time by following in the footsteps of physicians from whom we are separated by the strictum and the laxum, humours, mucous membranes, pores, not to name the 66,666 sorts of fever which specially attack the animal organisation. We will not occupy ourselves with Aristotle, Pliny, Ambrose Paré, a miserable idealist, who has said, “I dressed your wounds, but God healed them.” No, that is not our business. Our patron, our hero, is Alexander; our practice, to tighten or relax the tissues—oh no! Alexander knew better than that, he cut them.’
“ ‘Long live Alexander!’ said the Vultures, Rats, and Crows of the audience.
“ ‘You have understood me clearly,’ said the speaker. ‘I have now the honour to ask the opinion of the Saw-fish, my colleague, whose doctrines I hold in the highest esteem, although I have my own way of applying them; and now, gentlemen, we will proceed to incise the muscles, saw the bones, and in fact cure our patient,’
“They are bound to kill me, I thought; a thousand times death rather than vivisection.”
“And you played the dead Dog?” said the Fox.