You reply.
"Men of great force of mind, and large medical knowledge and experience, see differently. In the law, similia similiabus curanter, they perceive more than a mere figment of the imagination, and in the actual results, too well authenticated for dispute, evidence of a mathematical correctness in medical science never before attained, and scarcely hoped for by its most ardent devotees."
But he cries,
"Humbug! Humbug! All humbug! I know. I've looked at it. I understand its worth, and that is—just nothing at all. Talk to me of any thing else and I'll listen to you—but, for mercy's sake, don't expect me to swallow at a gulp any thing of this sort, for I can't do it. I'd rather believe in Animal Magnetism. Why, I saw one of these new lights in medicine, who was called in to a child in the croup, actually put two or three little white pellets upon its tongue, no larger than a pin's head, and go away with as much coolness as if he were not leaving the poor little sufferer to certain death. 'For Heaven's sake!' said I, to the parents, 'aint you going to have any thing done for that child?' 'The doctor has just given it medicine,' they replied. 'He has done all that is required.' I was so out of patience with them for being such consummate fools, that I put my hat on and walked out of the house without saying a word."
"Did the child die?" you ask.
"It happened by the merest chance to escape death. Its constitution was too strong for the grim destroyer."
"Was nothing else done?" you ask. "No medicines given but homeopathic powders?"
"No. They persevered to the last."
"The child was well in two or three days I suppose?" you remark.
"Yes," he replies, a little coldly.