Dr. S. attended my young companion in pedestrianism a long time, and sometimes brought a student into the bargain. He probably kept his patient insane with his medicine about half the time, and greatly prolonged his disease and his sufferings. But he knew no better way. He was trained to all this. The idea that half a dozen careful visits, instead of fifty formal ones, and a few shillings' worth of medicine instead of some twenty or thirty dollars' worth, would give the young man a better prospect of recovery than his own routine of fashionable book-dosing and drugging, never for once, I dare say, entered his head. And yet his head was large enough to hold such a simple idea, had it been put there very early; and the deposit would have done much to make him--what physicians will one day become--a rich blessing to the world. Reader, are here no confessions of medical importance? If not, bear with me awhile, and you will probably find them. We have yet a long road to travel, and there are many confessions to be made in which I have a personal concern and responsibility, and, as you may perhaps conclude, no small share of downright culpability. CHAPTER XI. PHYSICKING OFF FEVER. The eyes of my mind having just begun to be opened to the impotence of a mere routine of medication as a _substitute for nature_, rather than _as an aid to her enfeebled efforts_, I was prepared to make a wise use of other facts that came before me, especially those in which I had a personal concern and interest. Here is one of this description. On the morning of March 12, 1821, during the very period when I was watching over my sick friend, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, I took from the post-office a letter with a black seal. It contained the distressing intelligence of the death of a much-valued sister and her husband, both of whom, but a few months before, I had left in apparently perfect health. On a careful inquiry into the particulars, both by letter and, after my return, in other ways, I learned that the Connecticut River fever, as it was then and there called, having carried off several persons who were residing in the same house with my brother, the survivors were advised to do something to prevent the germination and development of such seeds of the disease as were supposed to be in their bodies and ready to burst forth into action. I do not know that any medical man encouraged this notion, the offspring of ignorance and superstition; but my brother and his wife had somehow or other imbibed it, and they governed themselves accordingly. Both of them took medicine--moderate cathartics--till they thought they had physicked off the disease; and all seemed, for a time, to be well, except that they complained still of great weakness and debility. It was not long, however, before they were both taken with the disease and perished; my brother in a very short time, and my sister more slowly.