The more I observe on this subject, the more I am persuaded--apart from my own experience--that pure water, at the lowest temperature which can be used without giving pain, is the best known eye medicine in the world, not merely for one, two, or ten in a hundred persons, but for all. I recommend it, therefore, at every opportunity, not only to my patients but to others. It may doubtless be abused, like every other good gift; but in wise and careful hands it will often accomplish almost every thing but downright miracles. We may begin with water a little tepid, and lower the temperature as gradually as we please, till we come to use it ice cold. CHAPTER XVI. THE VIPER STORY. I was, early in life, greatly perplexed in mind by the oft-recurring question, why it was that in the hands of common sense men, every known system of medicine--even one which was diametrically opposed to the prevailing custom or belief, like that of Hahnemann, seemed to be successful. Not only the botanic practitioner with his herbs, and the homoeopathist with his billionth dilutions, but even the no-medicine man[B] could boast of his cures, and, for aught I could see, of about an equal number--good sense and perseverance and other things being equal. And then, again, he that bled everybody, or almost everybody, if abounding in good sense, like the late Dr. Hubbard, of Pomfret, in Connecticut, was about as successful as those who, like Dr. Danforth, once an eminent practitioner of Boston, would bleed nobody, nor, if in his power to prevent it, suffer the lancet to be used by anybody else. While cogitating on this subject one day, the following anecdote from a surgical work--I think a French work--came under my eye, and at once solved the problem, and relieved me of my difficulty. It may probably be relied on. When the Abbé Fontana, a distinguished medical man and naturalist, was travelling, once, in some of the more northern countries of Europe, he was greatly surprised to find such a wonderful variety of applications to the bite of the viper, and still more to find them all successful, or at least about equally so. Even those that were in character diametrically opposed to each other, _all cured_. His astonishment continued and increased when he found at length that those who applied nothing at all recovered about as readily as any of the rest. In the sequel, as the result of diligent and scientific research, it turned out that the bite of this animal, however dangerous and fatal in hot climates, is scarcely dangerous at all in cold ones. Hence it was that all sorts of treatment appeared to cure. In other words, the persons who were bitten all recovered in spite of the applications made to their wounds, and generally in about the same period of time.