346 PKOSB HALIETJTICS. 



recollections ; colcMcum, that as by a charm assuages the 

 anguish of acute rheumatism; and thou, lighter than 

 bark, ' levior cortice/ invaluable quinine, that paralysest 

 the violence of ague, and loosest his victim jfrom the 

 punctual foe's attack : the sealed mottled wrapper, with 

 its two blue papers enclosed, and a doctor, worthy a 

 saint's name, on the cover ; the powder that dovers the 

 unhappy off to sleep, and ' closes lids though sullied 

 with a tear ;' hemlock, that mitigates the spasmodic suf- 

 ferings of hooping-cough ; and belladonna, the antidote 

 to that maligne^t of scourges which ofttimes, not content 

 with taking our first-bom, departs not till it has swept 

 our nursery with the besom of destruction, and stiUed 

 for ever the sweet jargoning of infant voices lately heard 

 exulting in the now hushed chamber with its drawn 

 blind,— all these are associated with more genial feelings ; 

 nor do those vUe drugs, hight foetids, which have so 

 often compromised him with pouting fair ones (who co- 

 quettishly vowed to give them and him up together, 

 though they happily afterwards thought better of it, and 

 now have been long since married and mamma' d), nor yet 

 that benumbing chloroform which, annihilatuig pain, 

 robs the surgeon's saw, probe, and bistoury of half their 

 terrors, present themselves to view unappreciated or un- 

 felt. But with what far greater complacency and wonder 

 must every enlightened physician contemplate nowa- 

 days that wholly unexpected and invaluable ally which 

 suffering lungs have recently secured from the iatric 

 liver of the cod.* Aleve flammam — to feed common 



* What calendared saint, whose iUumined name shines in Ro- 

 man missal or breviary, can show half so many or so well attested 

 cases of miraculous cure as have emanated from the body of this 

 fishP Verily, as shoemakers and cabmen iave their patron 

 saints (Crispin and Fiacre), the doctors ought to insist, when the 

 next vacancy occurs at the Vatican, on the canonization of St. 

 Gadiis. 



