248 A Century of Science 



wagons, he scrambled in ; for a moment I could see 

 nothing of him but his boots. At length he pro- 

 duced a box which he had extracted from some 

 dark recess within, and opening it presented me 

 with a folded paper. .' What is it ? ' said I. c Calo- 

 mel,' said the doctor. 



" Under the circumstances I would have taken 

 almost anything. There was not enough to do me 

 much harm, and it might possibly do good ; so at 

 camp that night I took the poison instead of sup- 

 per." 



After the return from the wilderness Parkman 

 found his physical condition rather worse than bet- 

 ter. The trouble with the eyes continued, and we 

 begin to find mention of a lameness which was 

 sometimes serious enough to confine him to the 

 house, and which evidently lasted a long time ; 

 but from this he seems to have recovered. My 

 personal acquaintance with him began in 1872, 

 and I never noticed any symptoms of lameness, 

 though I remember taking several pleasant walks 

 with him. Perhaps the source of the lameness 

 may be indicated in the following account of his 

 condition in 1848, cited from the fragment of auto- 

 biography in which he uses the third person : " To 

 the maladies of the prairie succeeded a suite of ex- 

 hausting disorders, so reducing him that circulation 



