It needed no very active imagination, in such circumstances, to make out, at least in prospect, a very "hard case." And as he who has a giant foe to contend with, arms himself accordingly, I immediately invoked the strongholds of the Materia Medica for the strongest doses which it could furnish, and these in no measured or stinted quantity. In short, I attacked the disease with the most powerful agents of which I could avail myself. I will not trouble the non-professional reader with the names of the various and powerful drugs which were laid under contribution in this trying and dangerous case, and which were most assiduously plied. It is sufficient, perhaps, to say that on looking over my directions--fairly written out as they were, and laid on a small stand near the sick-bed--you might have discovered that hardly a half-hour, by night or day, could pass, in which he was not required to swallow some very active or in other words poisonous medicinal agent or other. For though I was even then greatly opposed, in _theory_, to the exhibition of much medicine in disease, yet in _practice_ I could not free myself wholly from the idea that my prospects of affording aid, or rather of giving nature a chance of saving a patient, was nearly in proportion to the amount I could force into him of opium, calomel, nitrate of silver, carbonate of ammonia, etc. It was, in short, enough to kill a Samson or a Hercules; and I repeat that I verily fear that it did kill in the present instance; not, however, immediately. For several days and nights we watched over him, heating his brain, in our over-kindness, to a violent delirium on the one hand, or to a stupor almost like the sleep of death on the other. Not satisfied with our own murderous efforts, we at length applied for medical counsel. My predecessor was not so far off as to be quite beyond our reach, and was in due time on the spot. He, good man, sanctioned the deeds already done, and only made through the force of their prepossessions, an addition to the dark catalogue of demons which already assailed if they did not actually possess him. For the first time in my medical career, I suffered, here, from a loss of the confidence of my employers. A very mean man, who could gain notoriety in no other way, undertook to insinuate that I did not understand well my profession; and this story for a short time made an impression. However, there was soon a reaction in my favor, so that nothing was lost in the end. More than even this might be said--that I rose higher, as the result of the report. Mr. M. at length began to decline. Nature, though strongly entrenched in her citadel, and loth to "give up the ship," began to succumb to the powers of disease and the load of medicine; and he gradually descended to the tomb. His whole sickness was of little more than a week's duration.