The noise of the dispute had waked the patient, who, learning the cause of the disturbance, calmly begged they would give themselves no concern about him, but let him die in peace. The domestics, who had been for some time listening to the dispute, on hearing the scuffle, ran in and parted the angry combatants, who, like an abscess just lanced, were giving vent to all the malignant humours that had been so long silently gathering.
In the mean while, the smooth and considerate Dr. Dridrano stept into the sick room, with the view of offering an apology for the unmannerly conduct of his brethren, and of tendering his single services, as the other sages of the healing art could not agree in the course to be pursued; when he found that the patient, profiting by the simple remedies of the Brahmin, and an hour's rest, had been so much refreshed, that he considered himself out of danger, and that he had no need of medical assistance; or, at any rate, he was unwilling to follow the prescriptions of one physician, which another, if not two others, unhesitatingly condemned. Each one then received his fee, and hurried home, to publish his own statement of the case in a pamphlet.
The Brahmin, who had never left the sick man's couch during his sleep, now that he was out of danger, was greatly diverted at the dispute. But he good-naturedly added, that, notwithstanding the ridiculous figure they had that day made, they were all men of genius and ability, but had done their parts injustice by their vanity, and the ambition of originating a new theory. "With all the extravagance," said he, "to which they push their several systems, they are not unsuccessful in practice, for habitual caution, and an instinctive regard for human life, which they never can extinguish, checks them in carrying their hypotheses into execution: and if I might venture to give an opinion on a subject of which I know so little, and there is so much to be known, I would say, that the most common error of theorists is to consider man as a machine, rather than an animal, and subject to one set of the laws of matter, rather than as subject to them all.
"Thus," he continued, "we have been regarded by one class of theorists as an hydraulic engine, composed of various tubes fitted with their several fluids, the laws and functions of which have been deduced from calculations of velocities, altitudes, diameters, friction, &c. Another class considered man as a mere chemical engine, and his stomach as an alembic. The doctrine of affinities, attractions, and repulsions, now had full play. Then came the notion of sympathies and antipathies, by which name unknown and unknowable causes were sought to be explained, and ignorance was cunningly veiled in mystery. But the science will never be in the right tract of improvement, until we consider, conjointly, the mechanical operations of the fluids, the chemical agency of the substances taken into the stomach, and the animal functions of digestion, secretion, and absorption, as evinced by actual observation." I told him that I believed that was now the course which was actually pursued in the best medical schools, both of Europe and America.
