Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/601

 recognize the merits of their colleagues the lawyers. But which one of them can step forward and say: I do not act like that wise Erasistratus of whom it is written somewhere that he favored rich lords, and himself drank refreshing raspberry juice, but when he was called to an ordinary plebeian who was getting a little yellow, he would rip open the sick man’s stomach without hesitation, look at the liver, look at the spleen, put in a wholesome powder, bind the wound, and turn over his patient—to the will of God?”

A storm of applause rewarded this anecdote, and shouts of “Good!” came from all sides.

After a moment, my friend went on,—

“And yet we must admit that it is the physicians who have done the most to alleviate human suffering. Unusual has been the progress of surgery. But the final result? Suppose medical science will really reach such perfection that it will be able to cure every single hurt and disease. What will be the consequence? Simple,—very simple. Men will not die then as heretofore on account of various diseases which they shall or shall not have brought upon themselves; they will not die prematurely; yet die they will. After fifty, seventy, or perhaps a hundred years, they will die of marasmus. All medical skill, in the highest degree of perfection, would, therefore, do no more than defer the possibility of death one or two generations. That is all! That is the result of all this gigantic mental work! But what does it matter whether it be twenty, thirty, or fifty years sooner or later if we have to return thither whence we have come? Truly, while that mysterious gray matter of our brain is in its normal state, many a one fears,—nay, dreads it. But the billions of beings who have gone before us are a sure guarantee that we shall perish like them, that no human power will avert our final doom.”

“And yet how many a work of art or science would have been finished had not its author died a premature death!” some one remarked at the authors’ table.

“True,” my friend went on; “but if finished, only to take the course of all earthly things,—to go to nothing at last. The most spirited performance of an orator or actor dies away in the next