As it would have been ungenteel in me to run riot on my entrance into the medical career, I pretended thorough conviction; indeed, I really thought there was something in it.  I therefore went on drinking water on the authority of Celsus; or, to speak in scientific terms, I began to drown the bile in copious drenches of that unadulterated liquor; and though I felt my self more out of order from day to day, prejudice won the cause against experience.  It is evident therefore that I was in the right road to the practise of physic.

Yet I could not always be insensible to the qualms which increased in my frame, to that degree as to determine me on quitting Dr. Sangrado.  But he invested me with a new office which changed my tone.

“Hark you, my child,” said he to me one day; “I am not one of those hard and ungrateful masters who leave their household to grow gray in service without a suitable reward.  I am well pleased with you, I have a regard for you; and without waiting till you have served your time, I will make your fortune.  Without more ado, I will initiate you in the healing art, of which I have for so many years been at the head.  Other physicians make the science to consist of various unintelligible branches; but I will shorten the road for you, and dispense with the drudgery of studying natural philosophy, pharmacy, botany, and anatomy.  Remember, my friend, that bleeding and drinking warm water are the two grand principles—­the true secret of curing all the distempers incident to humanity.

“Yes, this marvelous secret which I reveal to you, and which nature, beyond the reach of my colleagues, has not been able to conceal from me, is comprehended in these two articles, namely, bleeding and drenching.  Here you have the sum total of my philosophy; you are thoroughly bottomed in medicine, and may raise yourself to the summit of fame on the shoulders of my long experience.  You may enter into partnership at once, by keeping the books in the morning and going out to visit patients in the afternoon.  While I dose the nobility and clergy, you shall labor in your vocation among the lower orders; and when you have felt your ground a little, I will get you admitted into our body.  You are a philosopher, Gil Blas, though you have never graduated; the common herd of them, though they have graduated in due form and order, are likely to run out the length of their tether without knowing their right hand from their left.”

I thanked the doctor for having so speedily enabled me to serve as his deputy; and by way of acknowledging his goodness, promised to follow his system to the end of my career, with a magnanimous indifference about the aphorisms of Hippocrates.  But that engagement was not to be taken to the letter.  This tender attachment to water went against the grain, and I had a scheme for drinking wine every day snugly among the patients.  I left off wearing my own suit a second time to take up one of my master’s and look like an experienced practitioner.  After which I brought my medical theories into play, leaving those it might concern to look to the event.