I took this medicine for perhaps a week; that was longer than I usually confined myself to one remedy. One day, when in an extremely despondent mood, I was seized with an impulse to kill myself. Neurasthenics, like hysterical women, sometimes talk of suicide, but these threats are usually made to attract attention and gain sympathy. Neither very often make any well-directed efforts to get their threats into execution. But for me to plan was to act; so I attempted the "rash act," as the newspapers invariably call it, by swallowing the contents of that little vial. I then performed a few ante-mortem details, such as writing good-byes to friends. About the time I had all my arrangements made and was wondering if it was not time for the medicine to exert its deadly effect, I changed my mind about dying. The stuff had been so slow in its action that it had enabled me to look at life from a different viewpoint. Life now seemed sweet to me and it was so soon to pass from me! Oh! why had I not used some deliberation before thus consummating the desperate deed? To the telephone I rushed. I soon had the doctor, and this was our conversation:-- _Myself_--"Doctor, come at once; by mistake I swallowed all the medicine you gave me. Do hurry, doctor." _Doctor_--"Did you take the entire contents of the bottle?" _Myself_--"Every one--over a hundred--do hurry, doctor." _Doctor_--"No alarm, then. You have swallowed so many that they will neutralize one another and act as an antidote. Calm yourself and you will be all right!" I thought more than ever that this was surely a mysterious remedy. A few weeks later I chanced to remember that in my ceaseless rounds of trying to regain my health and retain such as I had, no osteopathic doctor had ever been favored by a call from me. I went to consult with one post-haste. The osteopath wanted to pull my limbs both literally and metaphorically. He discovered that I had a rib depressed and digging into my lungs; also a dislocation of my atlas, which is a bone at the top of my spinal column. He was not sure but that one of my cranial bones was pressing upon one of the large nerve centers in my brain. My symptoms were all reflex from these troubles. I did not decide upon an immediate course of osteopathic treatment, as I had been struck by something new. I will tell about it another chapter; it makes me so tired to write so much at one time. That accounts for these short chapters all along. CHAPTER XVI. TAKES A COURSE IN A MEDICAL COLLEGE.