The old doctor, on learning that his patient suffered from a wound, exclaimed, “This must be cauterised forthwith,” and immediately called for his urchin to heat his iron. Gerard, who didn’t like the look of things, informed the leech the wound was caused by the bear’s paw, and not his jaw. “And why did’st not tell me that at once?” “Because you kept telling me instead.” “Never conceal aught from your leech, young man,” continued the senior, who was a good talker, but one of the worst listeners in Europe. “Well, it is an ill business. All the horny excrescences of animals—to wit, claws of tigers, panthers, badgers, cats, bears, and the like, and horn of deer, and nails of humans, especially children, are imbued with direst poison. I had better have been bitten by a cur, _whatever you may say_, than gored by a bull or stag, or scratched by bear. However, shalt have a good biting cataplasm for thy leg; meantime keep we the body cool: put out thy tongue!—good!—fever. Let me feel thy pulse: good!—fever! I ordain flebotomy, and on the instant. Hans, go fetch the things needful, and I will entertain the patient meantime with reasons.” The man of art then entered into a learned disquisition on pathology and the healthful practice of blood-letting. Time was evidently no object, neither the extremity of his patient. “Think not,” said he warmly, “that it suffices to bleed; any paltry barber can open a vein. The art is to know what vein to empty, and for what disease. T’other day they brought me one tormented with earache. I let him blood in the right thigh, and away flew his earache. By-the-bye, he has died since then. Another came with the toothache. I bleed him behind the ear, and relieved him in a jiffey. He is also since dead as it happens.” After thus reciting his powers in venesection, the worthy doctor thought he could not do better than back it up with a show of knowledge, and recommenced on a new theme. “Know, young man, that two schools of art contend at this moment throughout Europe. The Arabian, whose ancient oracles are Avicenna, Rhazes, Allricazis; and its revivers are Chauliac and Lanfranc; and the Greek school, whose modern champions are Bessarion, Platinus, and Marsilius Ficinus, but whose pristine doctors were medicine’s very oracles—Phœbus, Chiron, Æsculapius, and his sons Podalinus and Machaon, Pythagoras, Democritus; Praxagoras, who invented the arteries, and Dioctes, _qui primus urinæ animum dedit_. All these taught orally. Then came Hippocrates, the eighteenth from Æsculapius, and of him we have manuscripts, to him we owe ‘the vital principle’. He also invented the bandage, and tapped for water on the chest; and above all, he dissected, yet only quadrupeds, for the brutal prejudices of the pagan vulgar withheld the human body from the knife of science. Him followed Aristotle, who gave us the aorta, the largest blood-vessel in the human body.”