This was a great treat to me, I assure you. It added not a little to the interest which was imparted by his instructions when he showed us, from the relics of better days, some of the bones of the skull, especially those of the frontal region, in which the eye is situated. Of course the sight of a death's head, as we were inclined to call it, was at first frightful to us; but it was a feeling which in part soon passed away. It was a feeling, most certainly, which in me was not abiding at all. Indeed, as the title to the chapter would seem to imply, I received in this dispensation of Providence and its accompaniments my first medical lesson; though without the remotest thought, at the time, of any such thing. I was only indulging in a curiosity which was instinctive and intense, without dreaming of future consequences. CHAPTER III. THE ELECTRICAL MACHINE. Two years after this, an aged man, a distant relation, came to reside in my father's family for a short time, and brought with him a small electrical machine. He was a person of some intelligence, had travelled much, and had been an officer in the army of the American Revolution. On the whole, he was just such a man as would be likely to become a favorite with children. He was, moreover, fully imbued with the expectation of being able to cure diseases by means of electricity; which in our neighborhood, at the least, was quite a novel, not to say a heterodox idea. Curiosity alone had no small share of influence in bringing my mind to the study of electricity; but a general desire to understand the subject was greatly strengthened by the hope of being able to apply this wonderful agent in the cure of disease. One of the most interesting phases of Christianity is that the love and practice of healing the bodily maladies of mankind are almost always seen in the foreground of the New Testament representations of our Saviour's doings; and it is no wonder that a youth who reverences his Bible, and has a little benevolence, should entertain feelings like those above mentioned. The owner of the machine had brought with him a book on the subject of curing by electricity. It was a volume of several hundred pages, and was written by T. Gale, of Northern New York. It had in it much that was mere theory, in a highly bombastic style; but it also professed to give with accuracy the details of many remarkable cures, in various forms and stages, of several difficult diseases; and some of these details I knew to be realities. One or two cases at or near Ballston Springs were those of persons of whom I had some knowledge; and one of them was a relative. This last circumstance, no doubt, had great influence on my mind.