CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



the spectre of yellow fever from the home. This 

 dreaded disease was gathering in a full harvest 

 in the farm-houses of the county. It had cut 

 down three of Mrs. McCormick's family, her 

 father, mother, and brother, and had swung 

 its fatal scythe toward the boy Cyrus, who was 

 then five years of age. When the doctor was 

 called, he insisted that the child should be bled. 

 "But you bled all the others, and they died," said 

 Robert McCormick quietly; "I '11 have no more 

 bleedings." No remedy for yellow fever, except 

 bleeding, was known to the doctors of a century 

 ago, so Robert McCormick at once invented 

 a remedy. He devised a treatment of hot baths, 

 hot teas, and bitter herbs; and Cyrus was res- 

 cued from the fever and restored to perfect 

 health. 



Such a man as Robert McCormick would 

 have been practically impossible in any other 

 country at that time. There, in that isolated 

 hollow of the Virginian mountains, he was a 

 citizen of a free country. His vote had helped 

 to make Thomas Jefferson President. He was 

 a proprietor, not a serf nor a tenant. He was 



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