HKB
at least any longer than he was within his sight or reach. Yet many people would and did trust him with their own lives and the lives of their children.
There was one redeeming circumstance in connection with the history of this Indian doctor. He would never prescribe for the sick when in a state of intoxication. He knew, in this respect, his own weakness. But then it must be confessed he was not often free from intoxication. He was almost always steeped in cider or spirits. He was seldom, if ever, properly a sane or even a steady man.
On pressing the parents of the sick child more closely than usual, they frankly owned that though they had not of themselves called in the Indian doctor, they had permitted Mrs. A. B. to invite him in, and had permitted the child to take a little of his medicine.
The secret was now fully revealed, and it was no longer a matter of wonder with me, why poison did not work well against poison. The wonder was why, together, we had not killed the poor child. And yet it was by no means certain that the Indian's prescription was of much force, save the few drops of alcohol which it contained, for all his medicine was to be taken in alcohol.
I stated to the parents the probable issues--that unless the child possessed more than ordinary tenacity of life, it must ultimately sink under the load it was compelled to sustain. But to our great surprise--certainly my own--it survived; and, though it was suspended for weeks between life and death, it finally recovered.
The most mortifying circumstance of all was, that this miserable mongrel of a man had the credit of curing a child that only survived because it was tough and strong enough to resist the destructive tendency of two broadside fires--mine and his own. But medical men are compelled to put up with a great many things which, of course, they would not prefer. They must take the world as it is--as the world does the corps of physicians. They must calculate for deductions and drawbacks; and what they calculate on, they are pretty sure to experience. But, like other men with other severe trials, they have their reward.