But to return to our conversation;--for I was never mean enough to refuse to give such information as was required, to the best of my abilities, even though I never expected, directly or indirectly, to be benefited by it;--I told him, at once, that if costiveness prevailed at the beginning of convalescence, in this disease, some gentle laxative might be desirable; but that, in other circumstances, no medicine could be required, the common belief to the contrary notwithstanding. Mr. M. seemed not a little surprised at this latter statement, and yet, on the whole, gratified. It was, to him, a new doctrine, and yet he thought it reasonable. He never could understand, he said, what need there was of taking "physic," when the body was already in a good condition. This physicking off disease is about as foolish as taking physic to prevent it--of which I have said so much in Chapter XI. and elsewhere. I do not, indeed, mean to affirm that it is quite as fatal; though I know not but it may have been fatal in some instances. Death from measles is no very uncommon occurrence in these days. Now how do we know whether it is the disease that kills or the medicine? And when we physic off, in the way above mentioned, how know we, that if, very fortunately, we do not kill, some other disease may not be excited or enkindled? You are aware, both from what has been said in these pages, and from your own observation, that measles are not unfrequently followed by dropsy, weak eyes, and other troubles. No individual, perhaps, is, by constitution, less inclined to dropsy than myself; yet he who has read carefully what I have noted in Chapter IV., will not be confident of his own safety in such circumstances. Yet if they are endangered who are least predisposed to this or any other disease, where is the safety of those who inherit such a predisposition? CHAPTER LXVII. TIC DOULOUREUX. Some fifty years ago, I saw in a Connecticut paper, a brief notice of the death of an individual in Wellingworth, in that State, from a disease which, as the paper proceeded to state,--and justly too,--not one in a million had then ever felt, and which not many at that time had ever heard of; viz., _tic douloureux_. This notice, though it may have excited much curiosity,--it certainly arrested my own attention,--did not give us much light as to the nature of the disease. "What _is_ tic douloureux?" I asked my friends; for at that time, of course, I knew nothing of the study of medicine. They could not tell me. "Why do medical men," I asked, "give us such strange names? Is it to keep up the idea of mystery, as connected with the profession, in order thus to maintain an influence which modest worth cannot secure?"