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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 87

The Science of Medicine

The Science of Medicine,

has been made by the recklessness of patients. I can recollect when they wouldn't give a man water in a fever—not a drop. Now and then some fellow would get so thirsty ho would say, "Well, I'll die any way, ao I'll drink it," and thereupon he would drink a gallon of water, and thereupon be would burst into a generous perspiration, and get well—and the next morning when the doctor would come to see him they would tell him about the man drinking the water, and he would say, "How much?"

"Well, he swallowed two pitchers full."

"Is he alive?"

"Yes."

So they would go into the room and the doctor would feel his pulso and ask him :

"Did you drink two pitchers of water? "

"Yes"

"My God! what a constitution you have got."

I tell you there is something splendid in man that will not always mind. Why, if we had done as the kings told us five hundred years ago, we would all have been slaves. If we had done as the priests told us we would all have been idiots. If we had done as the doctors told us we would all have been dead. We have been saved by disobedience. We have been saved by that splendid thing called independence, and I want to see more of it, day after day, and I want to see children raised so they will have it. That is my doctrine. Give the children a chance. Be perfectly honour bright with them, and they will be your friends when you are old. Don't try to teach them something they can never learn. Don't insist upon their pursuing some calling they have no sort of faculty for. Don't make that poor girl play ten years on a piano when she has no ear for music, and when she has practised until she can play "Bonaparte crossing the Alps and you can't tell after she has played it whether Bonaparte ever got across or not.