It was at this juncture that Mr. Millingen was, for the first time, according to his own account, invited to attend Lord Byron in his medical capacity,—­his visit on the 10th being so little, as he states, professional, that he did not even, on that occasion, feel his Lordship’s pulse.  The great object for which he was now called in, and rather, it would seem, by Fletcher than Dr. Bruno, was for the purpose of joining his representations and remonstrances to theirs, and prevailing upon the patient to suffer himself to be bled,—­an operation now become absolutely necessary from the increase of the fever, and which Dr. Bruno had, for the last two days, urged in vain.

Holding gentleness to be, with a disposition like that of Byron, the most effectual means of success, Mr. Millingen tried, as he himself tells us, all that reasoning and persuasion could suggest towards attaining his object.  But his efforts were fruitless:—­Lord Byron, who had now become morbidly irritable, replied angrily, but still with all his accustomed acuteness and spirit, to the physician’s observations.  Of all his prejudices, he declared, the strongest was that against bleeding.  His mother had obtained from him a promise never to consent to being bled; and whatever argument might be produced, his aversion, he said, was stronger than reason.  “Besides, is it not,” he asked, “asserted by Dr. Reid, in his Essays, that less slaughter is effected by the lance than the lancet:—­that minute instrument of mighty mischief!” On Mr. Millingen observing that this remark related to the treatment of nervous, but not of inflammatory complaints, he rejoined, in an angry tone, “Who is nervous, if I am not?  And do not those other words of his, too, apply to my case, where he says that drawing blood from a nervous patient is like loosening the chords of a musical instrument, whose tones already fail for want of sufficient tension?  Even before this illness, you yourself know how weak and irritable I had become;—­and bleeding, by increasing this state, will inevitably kill me.  Do with me whatever else you like, but bleed me you shall not.  I have had several inflammatory fevers in my life, and at an age when more robust and plethoric:  yet I got through them without bleeding.  This time, also, will I take my chance."[1]

[Footnote 1:  It was during the same, or some similar conversation, that Dr. Bruno also reports him to have said, “If my hour is come, I shall die, whether I lose my blood or keep it.”]

After much reasoning and repeated entreaties, Mr. Millingen at length succeeded in obtaining from him a promise, that should he feel his fever increase at night, he would allow Dr. Bruno to bleed him.

During this day he had transacted business and received several letters; particularly one that much pleased him from the Turkish Governor, to whom he had sent the rescued prisoners, and who, in this communication, thanked him for his humane interference, and requested a repetition of it.