It was now high time for me to abandon a field which was not only fully occupied, but _well_ occupied. The visits of the young physician were continued, at longer or shorter intervals, for years, till the young woman's health was nearly restored; and, as I subsequently learned, they were married. The more recent history of her life, I have not been able to ascertain, except that neither party gained as much by the new connection as had been expected,--a result which, alas! is by no means any thing new, and that there was, after some time, a relapse of disease. This artifice for restoring health to a bedridden patient, is not mentioned in a way of approbation, but of regret, or at least of confession. Yet, while it declares my weakness, it develops or at least confirms a well-known principle, which it concerns mankind, patients as well as physicians, most fully and clearly to understand. The medical efficiency of an agent is greatly enhanced when the mind can be made to go along with it. I have wished a thousand times, both by night and by day, that I had never commended Dr. Juvenis to the favorable notice and regard of this illiterate but confiding family. True, I had the good fortune thus to get rid of a most troublesome, standing _patient_. Had I a moral right thus to do? Did the end either sanction or sanctify the means? Grant that I saved, or seemed to save, the patient;--was she really saved? Was there any absolute gain in the end? These are questions which I cannot, as yet, fully settle. Most certainly she was not quite cured. What a mighty work for this fallen world education has yet to achieve; especially Physical Education! This, reader, let me say once for all, this physical education, under the guidance of Christianity, whose handmaid all true science should be, and to whose development and application all true religion should be directed, is our chief dependence. It is the lever by which we are to raise the world. CHAPTER XXXVII. HEZEKIAH AND DELIRIUM TREMENS. One morning, about two o'clock, in the depth of winter, I was roused from my slumbers by a stranger's voice, requesting me to get up and go immediately along the sides of the mountain and see Hezekiah. "And who is Hezekiah?" I said, only half awake; "and where is the side of the mountain? And who are you with whom I am conversing?" The mystery was easily cleared up, and I mounted my horse and was soon on the road through the sides of the mountain. It was wild and unfrequented; nay, it was, in places, almost impassable, especially in the night. Mr. Judkins, the father of the sick man, not only resided quite beyond my usual range of practice, but almost out of the range of everybody else, squirrels and rabbits and wild fowls excepted.