My errors in this case were numerous and great. Believing, as I did, in the outset, that Dr. Bolus and myself could never agree, I did wrong in consenting to a consultation with him. I ought to have been nothing but a visitor, or else to have entered fully into the spirit and duty of a counsellor. In the former case I might, indeed, have outraged every feeling of benevolence; in the latter I ought to have proposed my objections in full, and not to have compromised so as to submit to what I really believed to be radically and essentially wrong. For I did most fully believe all this; and in spite of every effort at concealment, my scepticism finally came out, and I was weak enough to speak of it, and openly to find fault with Dr. Bolus. A practical quarrel followed between Dr. Bolus and myself, in which the friends joined, or, at least, strongly sympathized. My own belief, then, was, and it still remains the same, that the violence of the young man's disease, especially the tendency to the brain, was chiefly, if not wholly, owing to the medicine administered; and that, from the very first, no active medicine--nothing but an exceedingly mild and cooling treatment--was required. It was even my belief that the ulcer was caused by the medicine. But, while I lost confidence in human nature, and especially in the human nature of some of my brethren of the medical profession, by this experiment, I became more thoroughly convinced than ever before of the great need of honest and benevolent as well as scientific men in this department, and of the general impotency and worse than impotency of much that is dignified with the name of medical treatment. I became most fully convinced, that in acute diseases as well as chronic, Nature, unembarrassed, will generally accomplish her own work, when left to herself and to good and careful nursing and attendance. CHAPTER LXXVII. BLEEDING AND BLISTERING OMITTED. One of my neighbors had fallen down-stairs, and injured himself internally, in the right side of the chest; and a degree, greater or less, of inflammation had followed. The pain was constant, though not severe; but the soreness was considerable, and did not give promise of speedy amendment. My advice was to keep quiet, both in body and mind, and to avoid all kinds of exertion that could possibly affect the chest. I also advised the use of water, not only for drink, in small draughts, but, if the pain and soreness should be troublesome, as an external application to the part affected. The food was to be mild and unstimulating. A tendency to crowd around the fire was to be guarded against and prevented, by putting on, if necessary, an increased amount of clothing.