Sampson sat meditating on the gullibility of man in matters medical. This favourite speculation detained him late, and almost his first word on entering the drawing-room was, "Good night, little girl."
Julia coloured at this broad hint, drew herself up, and lighted a bedcandle. She went to Mrs. Dodd, kissed her, and whispered in her ear, "I hate him!" and, as she retired, her whole elegant person launched ladylike defiance; under which brave exterior no little uneasiness was hidden. "Oh, what will become of me!" thought she, "if _he_ has gone and told him about Henley?"
"Let's see the prescriptions, ma'am," said Dr. Sampson.
Delighted at this concession, Mrs. Dodd took them out of her desk and spread them earnestly. He ran his eye over them, and pointed out that the mucous-membrane man and the nerve man had prescribed the same medicine, on irreconcilable grounds; and a medicine, moreover, whose effect on the nerves was _nil,_ and on the mucous membrane was not to soothe it, but plough it and harrow it; "and did not that open her eyes?" He then reminded her that all these doctors in consultation would have contrived to agree. "But you," said he, "have baffled the collusive hoax by which Dox arrived at a sham uniformity--honest uniformity can never exist till scientific principles obtain. Listme! To begin, is the pashint in love?"
The doctor put this query in just the same tone in which they inquire "Any expectoration?" But Mrs. Dodd, in reply, was less dry and business-like. She started and looked aghast. This possibility had once, for a moment, occurred to her, but only to be rejected, the evidence being all against it.
"In love?" said she. "That child, and I not know it!"
He said he had never supposed that. "But I thought I'd just ask ye; for she has no bodily ailment, and the passions are all counterfeit diseases; they are connected, like all diseases, with cerebral instability, have their hearts and chills like all diseases, and their paroxysms and remissions like all diseases. Nlistme! You have detected the signs of a slight cerebral instability; I have ascertained th' absence of all physical cause: then why make this healthy pashint's buddy a test-tube for poisons? Sovereign drugs (I deal with no other, I leave the nullities to the noodles) are either counterpoisons or poisons, and here there is nothing to counterpoison at prisent. So I'm for caushin, and working on the safe side th' hidge, till we are less in the dark. Mind ye, young women at her age are kittle cattle; they have gusts o' this, and gusts o' that, th' unreasonable imps. D'ye see these two pieces pasteboard? They are tickets for a ball,
"Yes, of course I see them," said Mrs. Dodd dolefully.
Original article by {website name}. If reprinted, please indicate the source: http://bseyt.7299299.com/html/141d699520.html
