Finally, there is a large heterogeneous class of prescriptions, obviously owing their origin to the principle of Sacrificial Medicine, of which the simple rule has been to prevent the miserable patient from adopting any mode of relief for his sufferings which Nature might point out, and adding to them fresh pain by any ingenious device which may occur to his physician. Of this kind was the treatment of fever in vogue till quite recently, when the patient was carefully shut up in a close room, with well-curtained bed and warm bedclothes, and was prohibited from relieving his thirst with any cold drink. Truly, if Marcellus Sidetes, who is said to have written forty-two books in “heroic” verse “concerning distempers,” had given us a picture of all the misery which must have been occasioned in the world by the really _insolent_ disregard of Nature and common sense shown in these matters,--how many thousands of lives have been thrown away, and through what maddening misery the survivors must have struggled back to life,--those poems, instead of being forgotten by the world, might have done us precious service by reminding us that there is some counterweight to be placed in the scale wherein we are wont to measure our debts of gratitude to medical science. Another appalling device was that of the renowned English physician, John of Gaddesden, who introduced the practice of treating the small-pox by wrapping up the patient in scarlet, hanging his room in scarlet, and in fact compelling him to rest his feverish eyes only on that flaring hue. John tried this notable device, according to his own showing, on one of the sons of King Edward I. (it does not appear to which he refers), and complacently adds to his report, “_et est bona cura_.” In those days, however, doors and windows were not made air-tight, and up the capacious chimneys a considerable portion of fresh air must always have rushed. It was reserved for a later generation to perfect the ingenious system for aggravating and intensifying fever by pasting down the modern window, closing the registers, and (as a climax) engaging nurses to lie beside the sufferer to keep up the heat! The writer heard some years ago from the lips of a Member of Parliament, now deceased, the recital of his own treatment as a boy, in or near London, under a severe attack of small-pox. His life being specially valuable as that of an only son, his affectionate parents, by the advice of a distinguished physician, obtained the services of _two fat women_, who were established permanently in bed on each side of the child during the whole course of the disease! What stipend was offered to tempt these poor obese females to perform this awful service has escaped from the record.