You are possibly aware, my dear Dolorosus,--for I remember that you
were destined by your parents for the physician of your native
seaside village, until you found a more congenial avocation in curing
mackerel,--that the ancient medals represented the goddess Hygeia with a
serpent three times as large as that carried by Aesculapius, to denote
the superiority of hygiene to medicine, prevention to cure. To seek
health as you are now seeking it, regarding every new physician as if he
were Pandora, and carried hope at the bottom of his medicine-chest, is
really rather unpromising. This perpetual self-inspection of yours,
registering your pulse thrice a day, as if it were a thermometer and
you an observer for the Smithsonian,--these long consultations with
the other patients in the dreary parlor of the infirmary, the morning
devoted to debates on the nervous system, the afternoon to meditations
on the stomach, and the evening to soliloquies on the spine,--will do
you no good. The more you know, under these circumstances, the worse
it will be for you.
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