After reviewing all the evidence in this extraordinary case, Hufeland sees no reason for doubting the correctness of the preceding report in all its essential features. As to the manner in which a mouse may find its way into the human stomach, the following statement is permissible. To begin with, it is a matter of common knowledge that mice often run about an occupied bedroom at night in search of food, and that their sense of smell is extraordinarily acute. Furthermore, it is easy to understand how a mouse, after tracing the odor of food to the partially open mouth of a sleeping child, would not hesitate, if pressed by hunger, to enter that cavity for the purpose of securing possession of the particles of food lodged therein; and it is also easy to understand how the intruder might then be caught as in a trap by the closing of the mouth which spontaneously followed. Under such circumstances the creature’s choice of the oesophageal route into the stomach as a way of escape was most natural, and equally so were the efforts made by the beast—as shown by the pain at the pit of the stomach and by the retching of a bloody fluid—to gnaw its way through the gastric mucous membrane. Although Hufeland yielded to the prevailing tendency among German physicians of the eighteenth century to adopt doctrines, both in pathology and in therapeutics, which are based upon hypotheses rather than upon facts established by experimentation, or by direct observation at the bedside or at the autopsy, and which as a consequence played a very small part in the genuine advance of the science of medicine, he nevertheless, as I have tried to show in the preceding pages, should be classed as a most useful and honorable member of our profession. Remember—he is reported to have said to his younger confrères—that there are two maxims which you should keep in mind, viz.:— 1. _Natura sanat, medicus curat morbos_; (Nature cures disease, the physician merely does what he can to facilitate the operations of nature); and 2. _Ne noceas, si prodesse credis._ (In your efforts to afford relief be careful not to do permanent harm.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV DISTINGUISHED SWISS PHYSICIANS WHO PLAYED A PROMINENT PART IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDICINE IN GERMANY Among the men who may properly be included in the present class of distinguished German physicians I have no hesitation in naming von Haller and Zimmermann, notwithstanding the fact that both of them were natives of Switzerland—that is, German Switzerland. * * * * * [Illustration: ALBRECHT VON HALLER ]