It was not such an Infirmary as the great Hospital at Malta, where the Knights attended in rotation and administered to the patients, and where every culinary utensil was made of solid silver, such was the ostentatious magnificence of the establishment. The Doctor provided better attendance, for he had also built a Beguinage in the air, as an auxiliary institution; and as to the utensils he was of opinion that careful neatness was very much better than useless splendour. But here he would have given Doña Oliva's soothing system a fair trial, and have surrounded the patients with all circumstances that could minister to the comfort or alleviation of either a body or a mind diseased. The principal remedy in true medicine, said that Lady practitioner, is to reconcile the mind and body, or to bring them in accord with each other,—(_componer el anima con el cuerpo:_) to effect this you must administer contentment and pleasure to the mind, and comfort to the stomach and to the brain; the mind can only be reached by judicious discourse and pleasing objects; the stomach is to be comforted by restoratives; the brain by sweet odours and sweet sounds. The prospect of groves and gardens, the shade of trees, the flowing of water, or its gentle fall, music and cheerful conversation, were things which she especially advised. How little these circumstances would avail in the fiercer forms of acute diseases, or in the protracted evils of chronic suffering, the Doctor knew but too well. But he knew also that medical art was humanely and worthily employed, when it alleviated what no human skill could cure.