XIII

Dr. Butts reads A paper.

“Next to the interest we take in all that relates to our immortal souls is that which we feel for our mortal bodies.  I am afraid my very first statement may be open to criticism.  The care of the body is the first thought with a great many,—­in fact, with the larger part of the world.  They send for the physician first, and not until he gives them up do they commonly call in the clergyman.  Even the minister himself is not so very different from other people.  We must not blame him if he is not always impatient to exchange a world of multiplied interests and ever-changing sources of excitement for that which tradition has delivered to us as one eminently deficient in the stimulus of variety.  Besides, these bodily frames, even when worn and disfigured by long years of service, hang about our consciousness like old garments.  They are used to us, and we are used to them.  And all the accidents of our lives,—­the house we dwell in, the living people round us, the landscape we look over, all, up to the sky that covers us like a bell glass,—­all these are but looser outside garments which we have worn until they seem a part of us, and we do not like the thought of changing them for a new suit which we have never yet tried on.  How well I remember that dear ancient lady, who lived well into the last decade of her century, as she repeated the verse which, if I had but one to choose, I would select from that string of pearls, Gray’s ‘Elegy’!

  “’For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey
   This pleasing, anxious being e’er resigned,
   Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
   Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?’

“Plotinus was ashamed of his body, we are told.  Better so, it may be, than to live solely for it, as so many do.  But it may be well doubted if there is any disciple of Plotinus in this Society.  On the contrary, there are many who think a great deal of their bodies, many who have come here to regain the health they have lost in the wear and tear of city life, and very few who have not at some time or other of their lives had occasion to call in the services of a physician.

“There is, therefore, no impropriety in my offering to the members some remarks upon the peculiar difficulties which beset the medical practitioner in the discharge of his laborious and important duties.

“A young friend of mine, who has taken an interest in medical studies, happened to meet with a very familiar story about one of the greatest and most celebrated of all English physicians, Thomas Sydenham.  The story is that, when a student asked him what books he should read, the great doctor told him to read ‘Don Quixote.’