Next day Zimmermann was able cautiously to approach the question of treatment, which indeed needed much tact, for Frederick obstinately refused to try any of the doctor’s remedies, especially any suggestion that he should moderate his gigantic appetite. Zimmermann suggested taraxacum; and after a good deal of discussion the gallant soldier agreed to try it. Taraxacum, or dandelion, used sometimes to be given as a purgative that was supposed to act specially on the liver; and no doubt Zimmermann thought that if he could get the king’s bowels to act freely the dropsy might be relieved. But next day the doctor had once again to go over the whole arguments. Of the three doses of taraxacum that he had carefully measured out with his own hands for the king, only one had been consumed; and Frederick sat looking with horror-stricken eyes upon the medicine glass as though it had been a piece of artillery. Frederick said enthusiastically, “I assure you that though my legs are swelled I am not dropsical. The only thing that is the matter with me is that I am a little asthmatical.” Zimmermann must have begun to suspect that to give taraxacum to his unruly patient would be very much like firing a pistol at the Rock of Gibraltar, but he persevered with a tenacity equal to Frederick’s own, and ultimately got him faithfully to promise to take his medicine. In the morning Frederick started on his medicine cautiously little by little, and by a miracle began to improve. Then nothing could be too good for the Herr Doktor with his wonderful taraxacum. It was saving the royal life. But Zimmermann added another condition. Majesty must eat less, and not so much of eel-pies. Then all the glory departed out of Zimmermann. That ignorant fellow Selle, with his balderdash about dropsy, was a better doctor after all, and Zimmermann, who really seems to have tried to act in as decent a manner as was possible towards his colleagues, allowed Selle to write and receive reports concerning the patient’s progress even though he was in disgrace. Frederick was a sworn enemy to all medicines, except a powder of his own, consisting of rhubarb and Glauber’s salts. At any moment the taraxacum might be thrown to the dogs, and the king’s own powder substituted behind the physician’s back. (Between ourselves it was not a bad powder.) “And,” groaned Zimmermann, “no idea could be formed of the excess which His Majesty allowed himself in his diet; his cooks were obliged to season his food in a manner sufficient to destroy his stomach; those dishes which were the most difficult of digestion were his favourites, especially Prussian peas, which were certainly the hardest in the world. This was the cause of all those attacks of vomiting and violent pain in the stomach which attacked him after every meal, and of the severe colic from which he suffered every week, and nobody durst remonstrate with him about it.”