By Remittency, I mean th' ebb of Disease, by Perriodicity, th' ebb and
also the flow, the paroxysm and the remission. These remit and recur,
and keep tune like the tides, not in ague and remittent fever only, as
the Profission imagines to this day, but in all diseases from a Scirrhus
in the Pylorus t' a toothache. And I discovered this, and the new path
to cure of all diseases it opens. Alone I did it; and what my reward?
Hooted, insulted, belied, and called a quack by the banded school
of profissional assassins, who, in their day hooted Harvey and
Jinner--authors too of great discoveries, but discoveries narrow in
their consequences compared with mine. T' appreciate Chronothairmalism,
ye must begin at the beginning; so just answer me--What is man?”
At this huge inquiry whirring tip all in a moment, like a cock-pheasant
in a wood, Mrs. Dodd sank back in her chair despondent. Seeing her _hors
de combat,_ Sampson turned to Julia and demanded, twice as loud, “WHAT
IS MAN?” Julia opened two violet eyes at him, and then looked at her
mother for a hint how to proceed.
“How can that child answer such a question?” sighed Mrs. Dodd. “Let us
return to the point.”
“I have never strayed an inch from it. It's about 'Young Physic.'”
“No, excuse me, it is about a young lady. Universal Medicine: what have
I to do with that?”
“Now this is the way with them all,” cried Sampson, furious; “there
lowed John Bull. The men and women of this benighted nashin have an
ear for anything, provided it matters nothing: talk Jology, Conchology,
Entomology, Theology, Meteorology, Astronomy, Deuteronomy, Botheronomy,
or Boshology, and one is listened to with rivirence, because these are
all far-off things in fogs; but at a word about the great, near,
useful art of Healing, y'all stop your ears; for why? your life and
dailianhourly happiness depend on it. But 'no,' sis John Bull, the
knowledge of our own buddies, and how to save our own Bakin--Beef I
mean--day by day, from disease and chartered ass-ass-ins, all that may
interest the thinkers in Saturn, but what the deevil is it t' _us?_ Talk
t' _us_ of the hiv'nly buddies, not of our own; babble o' comets an'
meteors an' Ethereal nibulae (never mind the nibulae in our own skulls).
Discourse t' us of Predistinashin, Spitzbairgen seaweed, the last novel,
the siventh vile; of Chrisehinising the Patagonians on condition they
are not to come here and Chrischinise the Whitechapelians; of the
letter to the _Times_ from the tinker wrecked at Timbuctoo; and the dear
Professor's lecture on the probabeelity of snail-shells in the backyard
of the moon: but don't ask us to know ourselves--Ijjits!!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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