SOME noble physicians have tried the effect of drugs upon themselves in order to advance their art; for this they have received Gold Medals, and are alluded to as Benefactors of Mankind. I have tried the effects of forty prescriptions upon My Person. With the various combinations, patent medicines, and so forth, the total would, I verily believe, reach eighty drugs. Consequently, it is clear I ought to receive eighty gold medals. I am a Benefactor eighty times multiplied; the incarnation of virtue; a sort of Buddha, kiss my knees, ye slaves! I have a complaisant feeling as I walk about that I have thus done more good than any man living. I am still very ill. The curious things an invalid is gravely recommended to try! One day I was sitting in that great cosmopolitan museum, the waiting-room at Charing Cross station, wearily glancing from time to time at the clock, and reckoning how long it would be before I could get home. There is nothing so utterly tiring to the enfeebled as an interview with a London physician. So there I sat, huddled of a heap, quite knocked up, and, I suppose, must have coughed from time to time. By-and-by, a tall gentleman came across the room and sat down beside me. "I hope I don't intrude," said he, in American accents. "I was obliged to come and speak to you--you look bad. I _hate_ to hear anybody cough." He put an emphasis on hate, a long-drawn nasal _haate_, hissing it out with unmeasured ferocity. "I _haate_ to hear anybody cough. Now I should like to tell you how to cure it, if you don't mind." "By all means--very interesting," I replied. "I was bad at home, in the States," said he. "I was on my back four years with a cough. I couldn't do anything--couldn't help myself; four years, and I got down to eighty-seven pounds. That's a fact, I weighed eighty-seven pounds." "Very little," I said, looking him over; he was tall and broad-shouldered, not very thick, a square-set man. "I tried everything the doctors recommended--it was no use; they had to give me up. At last a man cured me; and how do you think he did it?" "Can't think--should much like to know." "Crude petroleum," said the American. "That was it. Crude petroleum! You take it just as it comes from the wells; not refined, mind. Just crude. Ten drops on a bit of sugar three times a day, before meals. Taste it? No, not to speak of; you don't mind it after a little while. I had in a ten-gallon keg. I got well. I got up to two hundred and fifty pounds. That's true. I got too fat, had to check it. But I take the drops still, if I feel out of sorts. Guess I'm strong enough now. Been all over Europe." I looked at him again; certainly, he did appear strong enough. "But you Britishers won't try anything, I suppose, from the States, now." I hastened to assure him I had no prejudice of that sort--if it would cure me, it might come from anywhere.