MODERN MYSTICISM AND MODERN SCIENCE. 279 



i 



quirement in any of the sciences appertaining to physic ever 

 yet became a successful physician. The reason it boots not 

 here to inquire ; the fact is conceded. No wonder, then, that 

 Sir Humphrey Davy is said to have had so little confidence 

 in the safety of a supposed remedy sent by him, when a boy, 

 to a patient, that he sent a messenger in hot haste after the 

 physic, requesting that it might be tried on a dog. To make 

 a successful physician out of a boy who had so little confi- 

 dence in the safety of a remedy as this anecdote implies, 

 would be most improbable. Nevertheless Davy, at a subse- 

 quent epoch of his life, wrought an extraordinary cure ; one 

 vaunted by him thereafter. Had he been of royal blood, 

 more could not have been, accomplished. He actually cured 

 by the touch ! 



The circumstances were as follows : Dr. Beddoes had 

 opened an establishment at Bristol for curing diseases by 

 inhalation of various gases. Davy, then a very young man, 

 was his assistant, and one not putting faith in the resources 

 of physic over much. Prior to the administration of nitrous 

 oxide, or laughing gas, to a certain individual affected with 

 pulmonary disease, Davy had to note the temperature of his 

 patient's tongue ; this of course involving the need of touch- 

 ing that organ with the bulb of a thermometer. The patient, 

 not learned in these matters, confounded the preliminary with 

 the essential. No sooner did he feel the thermometer bulb 

 in contact with his tongue, than he proclaimed himself better. 

 Davy, appreciating the full force of the joke, day after day 

 repeated the process, until, strange to tell, a perfect cure was 

 wrought. Of this result Dr. Beddoes was proud. He pub- 

 lished the case, amongst others, to demonstrate the remedial 

 powers of gas-inhalation. 



Nothing can well be more pregnant with fallacy than an 

 opinion concerning the remedial powers of any agent, or any 

 system, arrived at by the patient himself. The conditions 

 necessary to the collation of evidence are not present ; hence 



