Mrs. Willard, of Troy, New York, under the full impression that the seat of human life is in the lungs, and not in the heart, and that even the blue color of the skin during the collapse of Asiatic cholera, is owing to an accumulation of unburnt carbon in the air cells of the lungs, made the experiment of trusting a few patients, in this disease, to the full influence of pure air, and nothing else. According to her account the experiments were most admirably successful. She cured every individual she experimented on (and it was a considerable number), and in a comparatively short period. It was my good fortune to escape cholera patients, with the single exception mentioned above. However, I am quite confident that, but for the alarm, which more than half paralyzes our efforts, we might much more frequently recover, under its deadly influences, especially if we begin the work of preparation in good season, and duly and faithfully persevere. There is much in enduring to the end. CHAPTER LXXXVII. OBSTINACY AND SUICIDE. Without examining the term suicide, in regard to its various shades of meaning, I have placed it at the head of this chapter; for I think it properly belongs there. Of this, however, I leave the reader to judge when he has heard a statement of the facts in the case to which I have applied it. A young woman was admitted to the family where I was, to be treated for a nervous complaint so obstinate as to remind one who was not wholly insane nor strikingly imaginative, of the demoniacal possessions of eighteen hundred years ago. She would not eat; she would not drink; she would not or _could_ not sleep. In short, she would not, if she could help it, do any thing which did not have an immediate bearing on her own well-being, for the moment. She was, in truth, one of the most selfish creatures in human shape I ever yet saw. If Dr. Johnson, who is said to have held that every sick person is a rascal, had seen her, I wonder what he would have said of the case. She was one of those young women who have never been governed, and hence cannot govern themselves. If she took it into her head to do or not to do a thing, she would be sure to carry her point, if not in one way, at least in another. How she came to consent to be placed under my care, I never knew; for all the neighbors and friends of the poor girl well understood that if she came there she would have to obey me; and yet that, if she _did_ obey me, it would be the first instance in which she ever yielded to any mind or will but her own, either earthly or heavenly. Perhaps it was a last resort--a sort of desperation.