One day she asked for some milk. In an instant I determined to try it. So I took a teaspoonful of this fluid, warm from the animal, and gave it to her, only requiring her to swallow it very slowly. She not only obeyed me, but appeared to relish it. Nor was there any nausea afterward, nor any evidence of evil effects or evil tendencies. At the end of four hours, I gave her another teaspoonful of milk, in the same way and with similar effects. At the end of four hours more, another was given; and thus onward. In twenty-four hours I was able to increase, slightly, the dose. All this while there was no stomach sickness, in the smallest degree. In three or four days, she could bear a table-spoonful of the "new medicine," every four hours, or a quantity equal to two or three ounces a day. In a week or ten days, she could take nearly half a gill at once, and had gained considerable strength. She recovered in the end, though her recovery was very slow. But I had hardly used the milk three days, before I began to be denounced as an almost insane man, especially by those who were wont to set themselves up as the arbiters of public opinion, and who lived too remotely to witness the good effects of the course I was pursuing. The family, of course, though they disapproved of what I did, could say nothing against it, especially as it afforded the only ground of hope of recovery. The whole public mind, in that region, was affected by the belief that milk, in a fever, is heating and dangerous. "What a strange thing it is," said many an old woman, and not a few young ones, "that the doctor should give milk to a person sick with a fever! He will certainly kill the girl before he is through with her. If these young doctors are determined to make experiments, they ought surely to make them on themselves, and not on their patients." The public complaint involved one serious mistake, else it would have had the semblance of reason to justify it. As a general fact, milk is heating in a fever, and is consequently inadmissible. The mistake to which I allude consisted in the belief that the fever still existed, when it had wholly passed away and left nothing behind it but debility, or the consequences of the fever. But the evidence that milk did not hurt her, lay, after all, in the indisputable fact that she improved as soon as she began to use it, and under its moderate and judicious exhibition entirely recovered her health. Observe, however, that I do not say it cured her; although I might make this affirmation with as much confidence as can justly exist with regard to any thing belonging to the _materia medica_. All I say is, that after having hung in suspense for some time, neither growing better nor appearing likely to do so, she commenced the use of the milk as aforesaid; and almost as soon as she began to use it she began to be convalescent, and her improvement went on steadily, till it terminated in sound health.