How can it be otherwise, until we know more than we do at present, of the great mysteries of life and death? It seems risky enough to permit the wisest and most experienced physician to touch those springs of life which God only understands. And it is enough to make the most stupid stare, to see how people will let the most disgusting quack jangle their very heartstrings with his poisonous messes, about as soon as if he were the best doctor in the world. A true physician, indeed, does not hasten to drug. The great French surgeon, Majendie, is even said to have commenced his official course of lectures on one occasion by coolly saying to his students: "Gentlemen, the curing of disease is a subject that physicians know nothing about." This was doubtless an extreme way of putting the case. Yet it was in a certain sense exactly true. There is one of the geysers in Iceland, into which visitors throw pebbles or turfs, with the invariable result of causing the disgusted geyser in a few minutes to vomit the dose out again, along with a great quantity of hot water, steam, and stuff. Now the doctor does know that some of his doses are pretty sure to work, as the traveler knows that his dose will work on the geyser. It is only the exact how and why that is not understood. But however mysterious is nature, however ignorant the doctor, however imperfect the present state of physical science, the patronage and the success of quacks and quackeries are infinitely more wonderful than those of honest and laborious men of science and their careful experiments. I have come about to the end of my tether for this time; and quackery is something too monstrous in dimensions as well as character to be dealt with in a paragraph. But I may with propriety put one quack at the tail of this letter; it is but just that he should let decent people go before him. I mean "Old Sands of Life." Everybody has seen his advertisement, beginning "A retired Physician whose sands of life have nearly run out," etc. And everybody--almost--knows how kind the fellow is in sending gratis his recipe. All that is necessary is (as you find out when you get the recipe) to buy at a high price from him one ingredient which (he says) you can get nowhere else. This swindling scamp is in fact a smart brisk fellow of about thirty-five years of age, notwithstanding the length of time during which--to use a funny phrase which somebody got up for him--he has been "afflicted with a loose tail-board to his mortal sand-cart." Some benevolent friend was so much distressed about the feebleness of "Old Sands of Life" as to send him one day a large parcel by express, marked "C. O. D.," and costing quite a figure. "Old Sands" paid, and opening the parcel, found half a bushel of excellent sand. CHAPTER XXIX. THE CONSUMPTIVE REMEDY.--E. ANDREWS, M. D.--BORN WITHOUT BIRTHRIGHTS.--HASHEESH CANDY.--ROBACK THE GREAT.--A CONJURER OPPOSED TO LYING.