'There is
nothing like regularity,' he would say, fill out the doses,
and dilate on the virtues of the draught; and if the boy
seemed none the better, the Doctor was not at all the
worse.
*
'I lead you,' he would say, 'by the green pastures. My
system, my beliefs, my medicines, are resumed in one
phrase--to avoid excess. Blessed nature, healthy,
temperate nature, abhors and exterminates excess. Human
law in this matter imitates at a great distance her
provisions; and we must strive to supplement the efforts of
the law. Yes, boy, we must be a law to ourselves and for
our neighbours--LEX ARMATA--armed, emphatic, tyrannous law.
If you see a crapulous human ruin snuffing, dash from him
his box! The judge, though in a way an admission of
disease, is less offensive to me than either the doctor or
the priest. Above all, the doctor--the doctor and the
purulent trash and garbage of his pharmacopoeia! Pure
air--from the neighbourhood of a pinetum for the sake of the
turpentine--unadulterated wine, and the reflections of an
unsophisticated spirit in the presence of the works of
nature--these, my boy, are the best medical appliances and
the best religious comforts. Devote yourself to these.
Hark! there are the bells of Bourron (the wind is in the
North, it will be fair). How clear and airy is the sound!
The nerves are harmonised and quieted; the mind attuned to
silence; and observe how easily and regularly beats the
heart! Your unenlightened doctor would see nothing in
these sensations; and yet you yourself perceive they are a
part of health.
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