That same year I experimented with _atropine_ in my eyes (a silly, risky thing to do), applying it just to see how I would look with the pupils widely dilated, little knowing how it would incapacitate me for my work. Putting in a tiny bit just before starting for College one morning, by the time I got there I could not see to take notes or to read, and it was only a day or two before “exams”! For one of the meetings of our College Society, I was given the subject _materia medica_ to treat in any way I chose. Having just been reading the “medicated novels” of Dr. Holmes--“Elsie Venner” and “The Guardian Angel”--I thought it would be fun to take a case described in one of them, as given in the nurse’s report, ask the students to diagnose it and prescribe, leading them at the start to think it a _bona fide_ case. The one I chose, I myself diagnosed as one of _globus hystericus_, and decided what remedy I would give, were she a real patient. Then it occurred to me that it would be interesting to know what our professor in _materia medica_ would prescribe for such a case in real life; and that it would add to the interest if I could tell the students that I would give them Prof. S----’s prescription after they had submitted theirs. I had no intention of deceiving the professor when I first thought of going to him, but growing bold on arrival, as I handed him the paper with the symptoms copied off verbatim, told him I was especially anxious to prescribe carefully for this case, as it had come into my hands from _a prominent old school physician_. As he read, his eyes twinkled at the nurse’s phraseology; he looked up at me once or twice, curiously, as I sat there scared, then, at what I had done. Seeing my pencilled diagnosis with a question mark at the bottom, he said: “Yes, you have diagnosed the case correctly beyond a doubt, and now for the remedy--I see you have three suggested, but first, let me know more about the case.” Then he plied me with questions. By this time I was greatly embarrassed; a suspicious twinkle in his eye, as he remarked that the nurse herself must be a unique person, made me uncomfortable. Finally he queried, “Who _is_ this ‘old school physician’ who had the case?” “Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes,” I confessed timorously. How he laughed! Hastening to explain and apologize, I told him how I had come to present the case to him, and that only on the spur of the moment had I conceived the idea of offering it as a real case. He had seen from the start that there was something queer, but was at a loss to unravel the mystery. After a jolly chat about it, he discussed the symptoms as seriously with me as though it had been a case in real life; so I went to the Society meeting in great glee, hoodwinking them until their answers were turned in, then telling them the whole story.