“Mai--dearr--sirr, nothing's extraornary t' a man that knows the reason of iverything.”
He then inquired if any one in the room had noticed at what intervals of time the pains came on.
“I am sorry to say it is continuous,” said Osmond.
“Mai--dearr--sirr, nothing on airth is continuous: iverything has paroxysms and remissions--from a toothache t' a cancer.”
He repeated his query in various forms, till at last a little girl squeaked out, “If--_you_---please, sir, the throes do come about every ten minutes, for I was a looking at the clock; I carries father his dinner at twelve.”
“If you please, ma'am, there's half a guinea for you for not being such an' ijjit as the rest of the world, especially the Dockers.” And he jerked her half a sovereign.
A stupor fell on the assembly. They awoke from it to examine the coin, and see if it was real, or only yellow air.
Maxley came to and gave a sigh of relief. When he had been insensible, yet out of pain, nearly eight minutes by the clock, Sampson chloroformed him again. “I'll puzzle ye, my friend strych,” said he. “How will ye get your perriodical paroxysms when the man is insensible? The Dox say y' act direct on the spinal marrow. Well, there's the spinal marrow where you found it just now. Act on it again, my lad! I give ye leave--if ye can. Ye can't; bekase ye must pass through the Brain to get there: and I occupy the Brain with a swifter ajint than y' are, and mean to keep y' out of it till your power to kill evaporates, being a vigitable.”
With this his spirits mounted, and he indulged in a harmless and favourite fiction: he feigned the company were all males and medical students, Osmond included, and he the lecturer. “Now, jintlemen,” said he, “obsairve the great Therey of the Perriodeecity and Remitteney of all disease, in conjunckshin with its practice. All diseases have paroxysms and remissions, which occur at intervals; sometimes it's a year, sometimes a day, an hour, ten minutes; but whatever th' interval, they are true to it: they keep time. Only when the disease is retirin, the remissions become longer, the paroxysms return at a greater interval, and just the revairse when the pashint is to die. This, jintlemen, is man's life from the womb to the grave: the throes that precede his birth are remittent like ivery thing else, but come at diminished intervals when he has really made up his mind to be born (his first mistake, sirs, but not his last); and the paroxysms of his mortal disease come at shorter intervals when he is really goon off the hooks: but still chronometrically; just as watches keep time whether they go fast or slow. Now, jintlemen, isn't this a beautiful Therey?”