Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/349

 A MAJESTIC LITERARY FOSSIL

from reptile to bird was not more tremendous, and it took longer.

It is curious. If you read between the lines what this author says about Brer Albucasis, you detect that in venturing to compliment him he has to whistle a little to keep his courage up, because Albucasis &quot;liv d but six hundred Years since,&quot; and therefore came so uncomfortably near being a &quot;modern&quot; that one couldn t respect him without risk.

Phlebotomy, Venesection terms to signify bleed ing are not often heard in our day, because we have ceased to believe that the best way to make a bank or a body healthy is to squander its capital; but in our author s time the physician went around with a hatful of lancets on his person all the time, and took a hack at every patient whom he found still alive. He robbed his man of pounds and pounds of blood at a single operation. The details of this sort in this book make terrific reading. Apparently even the healthy did not escape, but were bled twelve times a year, on a particular day of the month, and exhaustively purged besides. Here is a specimen of the vigorous old-time practice; it occurs in our author s adoring biography of a Doctor Aretseus, a licensed assassin of Homer s time, or thereabouts:

In a Quinsey he used Venesection, and allow d the Blood to flow till the Patient was ready to faint away.

There is no harm in trying to cure a headache in our day. You can t do it, but you get more or less entertainment out of trying, and that is something;

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