"
"So soon?"
"So soon? In these eases of advanced pulmonary disease the sooner the
better. The French custom of speedy interment may be defended as more
wholesome than our own. On the other hand, I admit that it has its weak
points. Cremation is, perhaps, the best and only method of removing the
dead which is open to no objections except one. I mean, of course, the
chance that the deceased may have met with his death by means of
poison. But such cases are rare, and, in most instances, would be
detected by the medical man in attendance before or at the time of
death. I think we need not----My dear friend, you look ill. Are you
upset by such a simple thing as the death of a sick man? Let me
prescribe for you. A glass of brandy neat. So," he went into the _salle
'a manger_ and returned with his medicine. "Take that. Now let us
talk." The doctor continued his conversation in a cheerfully scientific
strain, never alluding to the conspiracy or to the consequences which
might follow, He told hospital stories bearing on deaths sudden and
unexpected; some of them he treated in a jocular vein. The dead man in
the next room was a Case: he knew of many similar and equally
interesting Cases.
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