magnifier.  He examined the bulb of a fallen hair in a powerful microscope.  He deliberated for a while, and then said, “This is a case of alopecia.  It may perhaps be partially remedied.  I will give you a prescription.”  Which he did, and told me to call again in a fortnight.  At the end of three months I had called six times, and each time got a new recipe, and detected no difference in the course of my “alopecia.”  After I had got through my treatment, I showed my recipes to my family physician; and we found that three of them were the same he had used, familiar, old-fashioned remedies, and the others were taken from a list of new and little-tried prescriptions mentioned in one of the last medical journals, which was lying on the old doctor’s table.  I might as well have got no better under his charge, and should have got off much cheaper.

“The next trouble I had was a little redness of the eyes, for which my doctor gave me a wash; but my wife would have it that I must see an oculist.  So I made four visits to an oculist, and at the last visit the redness was nearly gone,—­as it ought to have been by that time.  The specialist called my complaint conjunctivitis, but that did not make it feel any better nor get well any quicker.  If I had had a cataract or any grave disease of the eye, requiring a nice operation on that delicate organ, of course I should have properly sought the aid of an expert, whose eye, hand, and judgment were trained to that special business; but in this case I don’t doubt that my family doctor would have done just as well as the expert.  However, I had to obey orders, and my wife would have it that I should entrust my precious person only to the most skilful specialist in each department of medical practice.

“In the course of the year I experienced a variety of slight indispositions.  For these I was auriscoped by an aurist, laryngoscoped by a laryngologist, ausculted by a stethoscopist, and so on, until a complete inventory of my organs was made out, and I found that if I believed all these searching inquirers professed to have detected in my unfortunate person, I could repeat with too literal truth the words of the General Confession, “And there is no health in us.”  I never heard so many hard names in all my life.  I proved to be the subject of a long catalogue of diseases, and what maladies I was not manifestly guilty of I was at least suspected of harboring.  I was handed along all the way from alopecia, which used to be called baldness, to zoster, which used to be known as shingles.  I was the patient of more than a dozen specialists.  Very pleasant persons, many of them, but what a fuss they made about my trifling incommodities!  ’Please look at that photograph.  See if there is a minute elevation under one eye.’

“‘On which side?’ I asked him, for I could not be sure there was anything different on one side from what I saw on the other.

“’Under the left eye.  I called it a pimple; the specialist called it acne.  Now look at this photograph.  It was taken after my acne had been three months under treatment.  It shows a little more distinctly than in the first photograph, does n’t it?’